Did you know that some Iranians descend from the same ancestors as the Jews? So in a way, they are their brothers. But why are some Iranians, and many Palestinians, and Arabs, Syrians, Egyptians, and now the Turks, as if sucked into this infernal spiral of hatred to be satisfied, and are they trying with such determination to wipe out this tiny people from the earth? A people who if you ask them, only want to live in peace with everyone including their close neigbours? Recently, on October 29, a celebration brought together 1.5 million people in Istanbul to mark the hundredth anniversary of the fall of the Ottoman Empire. President Erdoğan promised in his speech that Turkey and its allies would invade Israel in the middle of night. What threat do they pose to them or to the world? Why did the Nazis, soon joined in this sinister enterprise by the governments of our civilized countries and even by some prelates of the church, attempt to wipe out all the Jews from the earth? And before them, why this genocide of Armenian Christians by Muslim Turks? Why did Catholic Christians hate born-again Christians not so long ago, to the point of putting them to death by the hundreds of thousands, forcing many into an exile to America? So many other persecutions known or long remained secret throughout history.

 

Well, it's all God's fault.

God who exercises moral government on earth, by favouring some because they follow his commandments. And then the others see it and they are jealous and mad about what they feel is an “injustice”. In the Proverbs of Solomon, 18:19, we read that “A brother who has been offended is more inaccessible than a fortified city, and dissensions are like the bolts of a palace.” I recently shared in the News from the Middle East, about this terrible dispute that Ishmael harboured over the centuries with regard to Isaac, and which inspired Islam. But not only that, because in reality, God will entrust the government of the earth to the Messiah of the people of the saints, an underground policy which, if it remains invisible to the eyes of many, is not ignored by the forces of evil. Threatened in their very existence by this glorious outcome, they act preventively by striking as many as possible of those who are lost to their cause. But God watches over his own, and one way or another, he will share with them his final victory.

A passage in John's first letter highlights this truth:

“No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God’s seed remains in them; they cannot go on sinning, because they have been born of God. This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are: Anyone who does not do what is right is not God’s child, nor is anyone who does not love their brother and sister. For this is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another. Do not be like Cain, who belonged to the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own actions were evil and his brother’s were righteous. Do not be surprised, my brothers and sisters, if the world hates you. We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love each other. Anyone who does not love remains in death. Anyone who hates a brother or sister is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life residing in him”.  1 John 3:9-15.

 

What was this event that triggered Cain's murderous anger against his brother?

We can read it in Genesis 4. We now know that Cain was jealous of his brother. However, Abel was not necessarily more prosperous than his brother Cain. He was a shepherd and probably led sheep and goats over the hills, feeding on their milk and honey and whatever wild fruits he could find. He slept under the stars, like Abraham later to whom God made promises. Cain, for his part, exercised the oldest profession in the world, which as we know is that of farmer, if at least we except the favourite pastime of his father Adam who devoted himself to taxonomic nomenclature, a branch of natural sciences which aims to study the diversity of the living world. Cain had a farm and fields, a pair of nice muscular tractors to pull the plough, and he had a wife. They had crop security. Gardening is a great job, especially if you don't have to constantly fight against weeds and pests and you just have to bend down or raise your arms to harvest fruits and vegetables. But this was not the case after they were spelled from Eden. Driven by hunger, Cain set to work on a land desolate due to the revolt of men and angels, and who refused to recognize him after he had shed on it the blood of his brother Abel the righteous. Perhaps Abel still had an advantage in being a shepherd in those days, before pro-wolf activists added to the problem. But what put Cain beside himself was when he understood that his brother had a privileged relationship with God, because God was already speaking to him about the plan of redemption that he had for man and for the world through of the sacrifice of an innocent victim, while Cain only knew how to religiously imitate his brother, which had no impact on his future or his prosperity. We can also think of Paul's words to Timothy: “In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted”. Abel thus prefigured Christ, the innocent lamb of God put to death by his own brothers but who resurrects and who ultimately becomes the instrument of their salvation. Innocent blood cries out from the earth and the earth vomits out the instigator of all these crimes which is the jealous one, the ancient serpent. Banished from heaven and now a fugitive on earth, he knows that his reign is coming to an end.

“Adam made love to his wife Eve, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Cain. She said, “With the help of the Lord I have brought forth a man.” Later she gave birth to his brother Abel. Now Abel kept flocks, and Cain worked the soil. In the course of time Cain brought some of the fruits of the soil as an offering to the Lord. And Abel also brought an offering—fat portions from some of the firstborn of his flock. The Lord looked with favor on Abel and his offering, but on Cain and his offering he did not look with favor. So Cain was very angry, and his face was downcast. Then the Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.” Now Cain said to his brother Abel, “Let’s go out to the field.” While they were in the field, Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him. Then the Lord said to Cain, “Where is your brother Abel?” “I don’t know,” he replied. “Am I my brother’s keeper?” The Lord said, “What have you done? Listen! Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground. Now you are under a curse and driven from the ground, which opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand. When you work the ground, it will no longer yield its crops for you. You will be a restless wanderer on the earth.” Genesis 4:1-12. "So Cain went out from the Lord’s presence and lived in the land of Nod, east of Eden”. Genesis 4:16.

Nod is a word that comes from “Nowd”: Wandering, the wandering of the aimless fugitive. Cain and his descendants pursue a life afar from the presence of God and they lead an earthly existence without eternal perspective. Later, Adam and Eve gave birth to another son: Seth, who came to replace Abel, and whose descendants ensured the continuity of the lineage of those who listen to God.

Because, although there is a great diversity of cultural and religious identities, there are in reality only two lines of men, or two camps to be more accurate, because this does not depend on flesh and blood. On the one hand, there are the living, and on the other there are the living dead. John states that the way we can identify with either of these categories is actually very simple:

“We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love the brothers. He who does not love remains in death”.

What kind of feelings do we have when Jews, Messianics, or born-again Christians are mentioned to us? These identities have their excesses and imperfections and they are many. But beyond what is tied to human nature, do they evoke joy, the blessing of God, the promises that come true, the advancement towards a new world? Or on the contrary, do they bring us back to our wandering, far from the true God, confined as we are in a religion which is only a plagiarism of the truth, subjected to the frustrations of an existence deprived of spiritual power, constantly in struggle with the circumstances, faced with our solitude and to the absence of certainty of our life after death? Are we content to judge and criticize, or do we want to move forward and change, and join those who have already made this choice? John says in the passage quoted above that “It is by this that the children of God and the children of the devil are recognized”. And above all, he reminds us that we can all be born of God, and ultimately this is what matters, for it the good news of Christ!

 

Christmas, our Christianized pagan celebration, is this truth that comes to fruition. God is born in a flesh similar to ours, so that we in turn can be reborn spiritually from Him.

 

Jesus warns his disciples that his coming had the effect of forcing the leader of this world to come out of his reserve and show his true face.

“I have told you now before it happens, so that when it does happen you will believe. I will not say much more to you, for the prince of this world is coming. He has no hold over me, but he comes so that the world may learn that I love the Father and do exactly what my Father has commanded me. ‘Come now; let us leave here.”   John 14: 29-31

These words are part of a long speech that Jesus addressed to his disciples, shortly before his death. Reading these chapters of the Gospel of John, we perceive Jesus' deep concern for his disciples. He knows that after him a thief will come who will divert and neutralize the message he has come to communicate to the world. So Jesus redoubles his effort. He gives his disciples many clues about what will come next, while making his recommendations to them. The world is delivered over to the power of an enemy who will maintain for a time the reign of lies and death. But Jesus ensures that the word he sows will find good soil, and that it will bear fruit. This word which we call the Gospel and which announces the end of the reign of the Prince of this world and the coming of the Kingdom of God, is like leaven put in flour and which will leaven all the dough, he told them. Carried in the hearts of the disciples, this word will support their hope and enable them to get through the very troubled period that will follow. And after they have been able to see that the word is true, they will be full of boldness to announce everywhere the great renewal which is coming to the world. Jesus, who knows the end of everything even before its beginning, said to them :

“ When these things begin to take place, stand up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.’ He told them this parable: ‘Look at the fig-tree and all the trees. When they sprout leaves, you can see for yourselves and know that summer is near. Even so, when you see these things happening, you know that the kingdom of God is at the door.” Luke 21: 29-31.

 

Jesus, the good shepherd, defends us against the wolf .

Men, are, in the eyes of Jesus, like a flock to be taken and this is what many wolves disguised as shepherds do not fail to do.

“Now the Son of God appeared precisely to destroy the works of the devil.” 1 John 1: 8.

“The thief comes only to steal, to kill and to destroy. I came so that men might have life, abundant life. I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep. He who is not the shepherd, who is not the owner of the sheep, but is paid to look after them, runs away as soon as he sees the wolf coming, and abandons the sheep; then the wolf rushes at them, seizes some of them and scatters the flock.”  John 10: 10-12.

“Beware of false prophets. They come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. Matthew 7: 15.

In the books of the Old Testament, God equates the presence of predators – animals or humans – in man’s environment to a curse.

“Surely they know the way of the Lord, the requirements of their God.’ But with one accord they too had broken off the yoke and torn off the bonds. Therefore a lion from the forest will attack them, a wolf from the desert will ravage them, a leopard will lie in wait near their towns to tear to pieces any who venture out, for their rebellion is great and their backslidings many”.   Jeremiah 5: 5-6.

 

A subject matter that divides.

But coming back to our Canis lupus, the common wolf, let me tell you an anecdote which clearly illustrates the problem of partial knowledge. This is happening here in our small Switzerland. Recently, a friend sent me a petition that she would have liked me to sign and relay. I kindly explained to her my position on the presence of wolves in rural areas, which she completely understood, simply deploring my lack of idealism. I knew about it, having found myself, completely by chance during a photo outing with my son, among pro-wolf activists, who had set up camp in one of our familiar places. The wildlife wardens were present to monitor the comings and goings and I have no doubt that my name is now on the list of “green terrorists” that they forwarded to our authorities – a threat subsequently published in the local newspaper which mentioned that “the photographers who came to cover the event, would also be denounced”. Whatever. The following week, I was exploring a gorge with the hope of finding a twisted tree to photograph, when suddenly, in the cliff just above me, young wolf cubs began to yelp, responding to a dog that barked on the road below. So they had come to hide there, to escape the control shots of the wildlife guards, less than a kilometer from a village on either side. But this game of hide and seek was only postponed, and our elected officials were therefore recently given, a petition initialed by nearly 50,000 signatories, among whom I am not included, signifying their opposition to the Canton's project to limit the number of wolf packs in the territory. Wolves are currently in full expansion here and there are increasingly significant losses of livestock, mainly young cattle. A situation that has become intolerable for farmers and their stressed animals, and which these men and women who work hard and in all weathers to feed us could certainly do without. Wanting to breed wolves on the backs of farmers for the satisfaction of a few, an experiment in cohabitation which according to well-informed people is doomed to failure, is a cruel game and one that costs the confederation dearly. The biologist graduated from ETH Zurich, and initially a great defender of the return of the wolf, Marcel Züger, makes a damning observation on the return of the presence of wolves in Europe. He confided that 25 years ago, he was convinced that wolves had to be allowed to return to their former territories. “When the first cubs were born in 2012, I was very happy. At the time I believed in the way their reintroductions were presented to us. But through all the observations made and the current situation, I can attest that the description we were given is very different from what is actually happening on the terrain. The problems ahead of us are going to be gigantic. If wolves understand that they can go even further, they will then become a real danger for the population and especially for children”.

The wolf, like man, opts for the easy way, and a heifer or a sheep are always easier to put down than a deer or a wild boar. This is also a problem well known to wildlife wardens. Because before the wolf who invited himself in, the lynx had been reintroduced into our regions by some great optimists, with the hope of seeing it regulate the Roe Deer, to then be able to ban hunting. But it was observed that the lynx attacks the fox. However, the fox is the regulator of voles and other field mice, which now swarm, and with them, the tick carrying borreliosis. The lynx has practically made the last capercaillies, hares and grouses, disappear from our forests. For its part, the wolf only exerts anecdotal pressure on the wild boar, which, due to lack of sufficient hunting, has multiplied to the point that it is a real problem for farmers. But animal predation has another perverse effect, that of pushing foxes, deer and wild boars to seek refuge near urban areas, where wolves will eventually follow them. Recently, a news item reported that a wolf had chased a deer and killed it on the central place of a village in neighboring France, where it had taken refuge. It is therefore not enough to reintroduce a wildlife actor to restore balance to nature. We can say that every time man has introduced a species with the aim of regulating another, a much worse imbalance has been formed, I am thinking for example of rabbits, foxes, rats, cats, carp and cane toads from our Australian friends. Some wildlife activists go so far as to say that man should be eliminated, and wardens regularly get death threats from them... I can understand that we can be tempted to become misanthropic, but let us never forget that God created the earth for man, and not man for Earth. So if you follow me to the end of this column, you will see that God has planned something quite extraordinary, and which will solve our problems and those of the world in an admirable way.

 

Someone said: There are no weeds. On the other hand, there are plants that are poorly placed.

But where from do we have this immoderate sympathy for these regulators of nature, which are certainly at home in remote places where man is absent? When I was a child, I saw, like many of you, these cartoons which suggested a completely different reality. Wolves were depicted, sly, with cruel eyes and long fangs, drooling at the sight of children. These overrated representations spring from a collective unconscious built over centuries of confrontation with these predators who have long reigned supreme in our deep forests. As their territory became smaller, they became more dependent on humans. Tormented by hunger, they prowled around the villages to catch a dog, or even an old woman or a child. They carried rabies, a frightening disease. It is reported in the annals that in 1851, a rabid wolf traveled approximately 45 km in seven hours in the forest of Lorge in Brittany, biting 41 people (10 men, 12 women and 19 children) and at least 76 domestic animals (source: Wikipedia). Before a vaccine was available, these people and animals were doomed. This situation did exist and it persists in remote eastern regions and as far as Siberia from where little information reaches us. Even if the disease has been eradicated here since the 2000s, it is always possible that wolves from Eastern Europe who carry it will reintroduce it, a serious threat if we know that anti-rabies vaccination of dogs and cats is no longer practiced. But rabies is only one aspect of the specter that canines pose over our society. In the 1990s, the pharmaceutical company Pfizer conducted virological studies on the Coronavirus – you read me correctly – and they came to the conclusion that two species are particularly prone to carrying these viruses : dogs and pigs.

 

Is the wolf a man-eater?

Still relatively isolated and fugitive, there is not too much to be feard. But as their numbers increase, they need more and more food. They then gain confidence and disinhibit themselves, even towards man that they consider as a competitor when he wants to defend his livestock. If you do a search among the videos posted on YouTube, you will convince yourself that to be a shepherd in wolf areas is a perilous exercise, especially when you are prohibited from hunting them. The most dangerous elements seem to be isolated animals, old or sick, which can no longer count on the pack to hunt swift animals. Likewise, they are more likely to attack children or an isolated person. Some people wrongly believe that wolves do not eat humans. But during the wars of the past century, it is reported that in places, packs of wolves feasted on the corpses left on the battlefields. In 1875 alone, 200 humans were killed by wolves in Russia. These predation statistics disappeared in the Soviet era, but we do know that predatory wolves killed 22 children aged 3 to 17 in the Kirov Oblast between 1944 and 1951. Recently, an Alaskan teacher who went out for a jog was devoured in leaving a village. Other confrontations with the wolf caused walkers to be scared for their lives. In areas where wolves are endemic, there are more guns than wolves, and no sane person would venture into their territory without this deterrent. Wolves are not alone on the list of human predators. Last spring, a young man was killed in Italy, but this time by a bear. For a bear coming out of hibernation and hungry, anything is good, and it won't even bother to kill you before eating your guts. Due to the increase in outdoor recreational activities and predators as well, incidents of this type are likely to increase. In our country, no fatal accident is known in recent years, but it must be said that the wildlife wardens track the wolves to eliminate individuals who show too threatening behavior towards humans. How far will they be able to do this? If current European policy continues, wolves will soon be so numerous that they will constitute a major problem for the populations.

 

From the wolf of Walter Elias Disney, to those of Hélène Grimaud.

Have we forgotten what wolves are? It is true that many images have got the better of our distrust. Hélène Grimaud, a pianist among wolves, or the film “Dances with Wolves” and the touching “Sock” by Kevin Costner, Mowgli”, “A Man Among Wolves”, “The Last Wolf” by Jean-Jacques Annaud, which is a fiction like his film “The Bear”, like also “Surviving with Wolves”, presented as an autobiography but which Misha Fonseca will admit was totally imagined. My friend Manlai, who runs a nature camp in Mongolia, tells me that in his country, groups of hunters must constantly repel hordes of wolves, otherwise their nomadic life would simply become impossible. We are far from this idea of a “last wolf”. Bears, wolves, wherever these animals have been reintroduced, their numbers are increasing due to protective measures and they are in conflict with the inhabitants and with pastoralism. Wisdom would dictate that we recognize the selection that has taken place over centuries. The beautiful images of an encounter with the wolves of the far north, by Vincent Munier, and so many other idealized visions, will have moved us about these proud carnivores and the fate that man reserves for them when he does not lock them up in filthy zoos. After the bear, the submissive, humanized wolf fascinates and interests. He alternately becomes a toy or a display, like the dog that we bring into our homes in large numbers. But the rural decor of our regions is not the same backdrop as these humanless landscapes, and wanting to ignore the order that has prevailed for centuries can only lead to unnecessary suffering, for the wolves as for men and their animals. What does this drift due largely to sentimentality actually hide? Why do we want to appropriate this wild and free being? Contrary to what some imagine, dogs do not promote rapprochement between men, but they contribute to the loneliness of those who surround themselves with such animals. It may be useful to look at the story of Diana of the Romans, Artemis of the Greeks, to better understand the ambiguity of our relationship with these animals.

Sometimes I come across a dog of a breed known to be aggressive in the forest. These dogs, those who have not been educated to encountering a man carrying a tripod on his shoulder, react to the indistinct threat they perceive, and their master is sometimes surprised and distraught. I particularly remember a young woman who left in tears after her Dutch shepherd attacked me at a bend in the path. She was shocked by the violence of this attack, in which I was forced to show the dog who was the master. No doubt she hadn't seen her pet in that light. In wolves as in dogs, stimuli can trigger extremely brutal reactions. It is recommended to never turn your back on an aggressive dog. Canines “test” potential prey, and to flee can trigger the attack. In recent years, an employee of a wildlife park was killed by wolves in Sweden, and the same accident occurred in Canada. This ferocity serves them to self-regulate, to protect themselves from the aggressiveness of competitors, but also to take away a share of the prize. They have the sense of the pack, like men perhaps. If you are seen as a prominent member of the pack, they will respect you, but anyone else could potentially get killed. Man has been able to take advantage of the wolf's abilities, and the dog that came from it has been used for millennia as a weapon of protection or attack, or as an instrument for hunting. I remember a great disappointment through which I learned what dogs really are. As a child, I breeded rabbits near the house, and I must have had around twenty of them when one morning, I discovered to my dismay that the doors of the hutches had been torn off. Of my beautiful rabbits only a few tufts of hair and some blood remained. It wasn't difficult to follow the tracks in the fresh snow, finding the dead rabbits scattered here and there, all the way to the house of a lovely neighbor who lived about a kilometer away. Her two poodles were the perpetrators of the crime. When you love your animals, that's something no amount of compensation can fix. Dogs are potentially crazy killers. Regularly, flocks of sheep are decimated by a stray dog. My brother, who raised sheep in his youth, will long remember the day his own dogs killed his flock. If you let go of your house dog during a walk in the forest, it is quite capable of killing a fawn or a litter of hares, and come back to you as if nothing had happened. In Australia, as elsewhere, the problem of wild dogs is real. There are, on the one hand, the dingoes who must constantly be regulated and kept at a distance from livestock and unconscious tourists, and several accidents, some of which are fatal, particularly involving children, are to be deplored. But in recent years, a more localized problem has emerged. Very dangerous packs made up of dogs of different large breeds returned to the wild, attack everything they encounter, men and animals.

 

The dog, that impertinent one.

No doubt Jesus was insulted by more than one dog when he walked with his disciples on the roads of Galilee. Psalm 22, which announces the death of Jesus by the hand of the wicked, says this: “Dogs surround me, a band of villains roam around me, They have pierced my hands and my feet”. The Bible is never laudatory when it evokes this animal whose existence seems to be linked to the drift which followed the revolt of the creatures. But why do we no longer know how to distinguish between humanized animals and humans? The dog who lives in a family thinks he is a man of a lower caste. He must be educated and submissive, because left to his own devices, he becomes a surly and completely unsympathetic resident. Certainly, beautiful things can happen between a dog and his master. But attributing to a dog a personality similar to ours is a big mistake. One of the lies of our time is the notion of an evolution of living things towards a more accomplished state. Based on this principle, we have a distorted understanding of animal ethics and ethology. Our friend Darwin had suggested this path without being entirely convinced of it himself. And what was only a hypothesis was taken over by atheist regimes who made it a scientific postulate to explain the appearance of a complex world, while ignoring the existence of a Creator. In reality, the world does not evolve, but it adapts. And given its initial perfection, it is in full regression, and this is perhaps what can explain why man is getting closer to dogs and animals in the broader sense. No doubt man perceives in this denatured wolf the same confinement and regression, and this makes it sympathetic to us and reassures us. Yes, our pets are often our foils or our whipping boys. We find in the animal subjected to man, a suffering similar to that of man domesticated by the spirits of the world. But the wolf is a being of its own. He is resisting, and that is what makes us both fear and admire him, or perhaps envy him. The wolf is to the dog, what the sons of God are to man captive of a society subject to mercantilism and religion. In the Bible, the dog represents impertinence, pretentious insolence, lying and compromise, the satisfaction of base instincts, doublethink and mixed things. This is undoubtedly what Jesus had in mind when he said:

“Blessed are those who wash their robes, that they may have the right to the tree of life and may go through the gates into the city. Outside are the dogs, those who practise magic arts, the sexually immoral, the murderers, the idolaters and everyone who loves and practises falsehood.” Revelation 22: 14-15.

This regression of man from a previous state, is at the origin of most of the ills of our society. Marriage for example. This synergy between two beings, which should multiply the productivity of individuals when they are in a relationship, is a notion that is falling out of favor, because putting two locked beings together will not make them more free, and marriage is disappointing. Today's man wants to have fun, he wants to break his limits, and those he has inherited. Certainly a legitimate need, but is it done the right way? In reality, the iniquitous foundations of current society do not lend themselves to this emancipation.

A phenomenon has become widespread if we refer to the proliferation of trends, practices and fashions, which, under the guise of expressing individual sensitivities, turn out to be harmful both for individuals and for society. We rewrite history based not on facts but by embellishing things to turn them to our advantage. We want a more ideal world, so we free ourselves from established principles without any real alternative and turning towards things that are much worse. We seek relief in chemicals. We get esoteric designs tattooed without always knowing that they are an invitation to evil spirits. We are witnessing the great return of transgender spirits who caused certain nations to fall and disappear. We are returning to an obscurantism once fought against. These groups of city dwellers who came to camp in the forest at the instigation of a movement of wolves preservation, to prevent the latter from being regulated by wildlife wardens, are big kids. The new “values” promoted by media culture, manga, music industry and others, which influenced an entire generation, are bearing fruit. Just as is the case with this propaganda in favor of the reintroduction of wolves, we no longer distinguish between reality and fabrication, between facts and fiction.

And as with the wolf, healthy distrust has given way to an immoderate welcome to transgressors of conscience. These movements are part of the trend of those who display the rainbow flag in the squares of large cities, to promote what is a negation of essential family values. We no longer want an authoritarian, patriarchal or matriarchal society and above all: based on religious morality. See for instance the struggle of American Democrats against those who claim to maintain constitutional values. Everyone wants to take power at all costs, and express things according to their feelings, which by definition is not objective. In reality, this revolt against the established order, certainly has a basis of legitimacy. But man left to his own devices does not have the necessary background to understand the real issues, so he will express his creativity in an erratic and anarchic way. If you focus on the wrong target, you'll shoot yourself in the foot. This counterproductive anarchy is nevertheless desired by the spirits of the world, because it serves their interests. Anarchy breeds control and anti-democratic and anti-God dictatorship. See for instance how the neighboring country, which hosted the Revolution, is struggling with an increasingly autocratic government. No one trusts anyone, and that's worrying when you know the internal threats that they have to face. Biologists tell us that wolves have the role of dispersing herds of herbivores, which is welcomed by some foresters who previously deplored the damages caused by deer to tree grows. Wolves, pandemics, different means but the same objective. It is about dividing men so that there is no longer an understanding, in order to then possess them more easily. Divide et impera. Even though God deplores the existence of predators and diseases of all kinds, they are nonetheless part of a necessary order. When man indulges in that which leads him nowhere, these creatures appear, generating fear, suffering and threats of conflict, in order to prevent us from going endlessly in circles and eventually sinking. Attacks on our integrity are vectors of spiritual awakenings and are generally followed by periods of solidarity and reconstruction of a society which harbours more authentic human values.

 

The driver of Coming Change? – A Word.

But how could a simple word spoken by God disrupt the course of events to the point of changing the face of the earth? It remains a mystery to us, but when God says something in his heaven, that thing comes into existence on our earth, in its time.

“In the beginning God created heaven and earth. However, the earth was chaotic and empty. Darkness covered the deep, and the Spirit of God hovered over the waters. And God then said: Let there be light!” Genesis 1.

In the beginning: chaos. The earth and all the elements necessary to support a rich and harmonious life are there, but in a disorganized form. So, God speaks. In doing so, he reestablishes his principles, creates an order conducive to life or reorganizes the world according to what has been disrupted.

This world, which we love or hate depending on the day, remains a mystery for many of us. We perceive its immediacy and our memory retains fleeting impressions, but the few years we spend there do not allow us to understand its origin and purpose. And that's why God gave us the Bible. According to these scriptures, a man who lives without thinking about the meaning of his life is a fool, or stupid if you prefer. Definition of stupid: Which denotes unintelligence. The synonym for the word intelligence is knowledge. The man therefore who does not have the knowledge necessary to grasp the meaning of his life, thinks and acts meaninglessly. Intelligence is something we acquire. We are not born stupid, but we become so when we lack the knowledge which should go hand in hand with our growth. The knowledge that God speaks of has nothing to do with academic knowledge. It's more about a good understanding of life. Animals apparently have an instinct that tells them how they should behave in a given situation. Their instinct perhaps comes from a spiritual breath that inhabits them. Man is a superior being, in the sense that he is inhabited by a breath that we assimilate to God. But does the breath of God inhabit ordinary mortals today? Can we, men and animals, be inhabited by other breaths?

It is written in the Gospels that Jesus was moved with compassion at the sight of crowds who came to him, because these people were like a flock of lost sheep, deprived of a shepherd. Jesus does not despise our ignorance, quite the contrary. In Matthew 5: 22, he says that the one who calls his brother stupid – in other words, who judges his brother for his ignorance without bothering to bring him light – deserves the severest punishment. We must recognize that we are all stupid before the infinite knowledge found in Christ Jesus. The little knowledge we have, should never lead us to pride ourselves. Jesus tells us that when we have done everything that has been prescribed to us, that is to say, when we have acquired and put into practice all the wisdom that is accessible to men, we will still have to consider ourselves useless servants. For this is the relationship that exists between the knowledge to which we are capable of accessing, and the infinite science of God, to which we will have access when we have been raised with Jesus.

But when man sees no further than the end of his nose, the eternal God sees everything, he understands everything, and he saw it in its entirety even before things began to exist. Suffice to say that his plan is infallible. God will restore the original order of his creation, which remember, was a world in which men and animals lived in harmony, being friends, partners. We see chaos setting in. But God already sees a world free from injustice, without suffering, and in which man will not know death, but will live in a state of permanent wonder. To achieve this restoration, it will not be enough to wave a magic wand that would transform wolves into lambs. The grace of God could perform this miracle, but you can imagine that not everyone will want to. Then, it will be necessary to uproot evil by annihilating the revolt of man and that of the angels. In reality, God will cause the earth to vomit out evil and the wicked who have taken possession of it. And during this time, through his outpoured spirit, Christ will enable humanity to give birth to a new man, a man born of God on the model of Jesus. The earth is not an entity and it is not our mother in the spiritual sense of the term. This role is the exclusive prerogative of God. God, as he revealed himself to us in Jesus Christ, is our father, and he is also our mother if we want parity. But the earth nevertheless remains this cradle within the Universe, a nursery from which men derive their material existence. The world we know is not the original world. There were no predators in the Garden of Eden. It is difficult for us who have always known the other reality to imagine it, but during Jesus' reign on earth, God will restore the order that then prevailed, as Isaiah prophesied:

“The cow and the bear will have the same pasture, Their young ones the same shelter. And the lion, like the ox, will eat straw. The infant will frolic in the viper's den, and the weaned child will put his hand in the basilisk's cave. No harm or damage will be done on all my holy mountain. For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the LORD, like the depths of the sea with the waters that cover it.”   Isaiah 11: 7-9.

“The wolf and the lamb will feed together, the lion will eat straw like the ox, and the serpent will eat dust. No harm or damage will be done in all my holy mountain, says the LORD.”   Isaiah 65: 25.

I love this phrase: “the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord, like the depths of the sea with the waters that cover it”. This is the real progress to which we are invited to access. This world is the one that God has given us the enjoyment of, with the responsibility to maintain it. Because heaven is for man only a place of passage, this place being reserved for God and spiritual beings. What Jesus announces to us is indeed the advent of the principles of his heaven on earth. The world that Jesus promises is a kingdom of which he is the king. It will not be maintained in an authoritarian manner by a religious regime, and even less by this balance of terror that we know too well. But we will see a new world, established on the eternally prolific foundation of divine love and justice without which God would not be God. A framework in which everyone will be free to express their potential in total jubilation. Because joy – that of a Father having found his scattered children, and that of man in his stature as son of God, highlighting an earth blessed again and which will reward us – will be the specificity of this masterful work. Don't you think that seen from this angle, the end of the world is a joyful prospect ?

What is the place of a Christian in this world and in this life?

This question is one of the fundamentals of Christianity. Credit to all Lords: to respond adequately, let's listen to what Jesus says about himself.

“Jesus replied, “Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.”   Matthew 8:20.

Strange observation all the same with regard to his status as King of kings. What Jesus teaches us with these simple and well-chosen words is that the present reality remains transitory, for him as for all who on his steps, nourish the hope of a new world established on everlasting foundations. There is therefore in the eyes of God, and we see it throughout the Bible from the stories of Genesis to that of John exiled on the island of Patmos when he wrote the book of Revelation, two kinds of men on earth. There are those who settle and take over the world in allegiance to the spirit of the world – they are the vast majotity. And there is a remnant of people who have integrated another paradigm. Belonging to the greatest number or the majority is by no means an assurance. Jesus warns us that those who have taken root in this world and its culture will perish with this world, and he reminds us of what happened in the days of Noah. While those who have kept their pilgrim's staff, who have on their feet the shoes of the gospel of peace and the belt of truth tied around their loins, and who serve as witnesses by living on what the goodness of God grants them, will pass through death and then reign over the earth. Look no further for the reason why the rulers of the nations hated and persecuted the early Christians. Their belief made their power illegitimate and meant the condemnation and annihilation of all their efforts, a feeling that traditional Christians later shared with regard to their "born again" namesakes, as the Jews had themselves persecuted their messianic brothers in Paul's time. Putting the truth into practice is a crucial step, and one that often confuses those who know how to be satisfied with religious theory, which we all are to some extent. But you have to have encountered the living Christ, by his spirit in you, to know what we are talking about. Jesus will say:

“You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life.”… John 5 :39

How one does come to choose one path instead of another remains a rather mysterious process. I don't believe in this predestination dear to Calvin, but I imagine that life pushes us against the rocks and caresses us in turn, and that in the end, it is the decisions of our hearts subjected to this permanent exercise that guide us. The Bible affirms that it is not so much our morals as our love of truth that is decisive. Some examples in the Bible illustrate this, for example when the "righteous" are about to stone a woman caught in adultery. And by the way, Jesus saves the life of this woman, but he also saves these men from a move that could have earned them judgment and hell with all the hypocrits. Or when the “good thief”, crucified on his side, decides that he has yielded enough to bad impulses and that at the end of his life, he defends Jesus against those who outrage him. The call of the truth in any situation is undoubtedly an instrument by which God shapes our spirit. Still, it is not enough to be indignant. But how do we behave in the presence of false witness? Are we letting anyone be wrongly accused? Do we let evil do as it pleases without reacting? The wicked imagine that because judgment does not strike them immediately, they will not be accountable. One of the best-known passages in the Bible is found in John 3. It's also the most misunderstood passage because we usually quote it out of context.

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life.For God did not send his Son into the world to judge the world, but to save the world through him”.   John 3: 16-17.

Hearing these words, we can think that God saved our world once and for all by sending his Son Jesus to die in our place on that cross, and that now everything is fine : the world is saved. But the context of these words shows us a very different picture.

“Whoever believes in him will not be judged; but he who does not believe is already judged, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. And this judgment is that, the light having come into the world, men preferred darkness to light, because their works were evil. For whoever does evil hates the light, and does not come into the light, lest his works be made public; but whoever does the truth comes to the light, that his works may be made manifest, because they are done in God.”   John 3: 18-21.

John says that in order for the world to be saved, it will have to come to judgment so that it can be set free from its oppressors once and for all. God will judge the world as a whole, but he gives us a lawyer who defends us on an individual and personal level. Not everyone, but those in the world who choose to believe in Jesus with all that this entails, are saved. How do we choose Jesus? Again, having a baptism certificate is not enough, but we must commit ourselves totally. Jesus says that to pass from this world to his Kingdom involves denying ourselves, or more precisely, giving up our vain way of life. Life is such that our daily life is strewn with trials that we pass with more or less success. From simple situations like the homeless person reaching out at the entrance to a mall, or the way we treat those around us, to situations where the issues are complex, and for which we vote. Fortunately, we are all entitled to our quota of failures and it is never too late to do well. But two things are paramount in life: You have to guard your heart and you have to love the truth. Jesus is the only way to God, the Bible tells us, and that does not please everyone. But let those who do not like this too exclusive notion be reassured : Jesus shows himself to us under many faces, very different faces but which have this in common in that they all reveal to us a facet of God's love.

“Jesus, who knew the thoughts that they had in their heart, took a little child by the hand, placed him beside him and said to them: He who welcomes this child in my name welcomes me, and whoever who welcomes me also welcomes the one who sent me. For whoever is least among you is the one who is great”. Luke 9: 47-48.

If we renounce these virtues of simple love and truth, the Bible warns us that cultured, sophisticated, and even very religious spirits, who are no less demonic, will lead us away from God. This is why loving the truth is not enough, but we must fill ourselves with the truth. Jesus could say : “I am the way, the truth and the life”. Many people have very strong ideas about religion. But are these their ideas or are they just passing on received ideas and prejudices? The battle for truth is a battle for people's mind. Religion should be equated with a form of romanticism with a pejorative connotation, because it “awakens in the soul the dangerous taste for chimeras”. Romanticism corresponds to a trust placed in feelings rather than in reason. Yet neither leads to the truth. Little knowledge makes you pretentious, but much knowledge makes you humble and cautious. For when we read the Bible, we see that God is not the one who chastises us, and if he holds the staff, it is like the good shepherd, to keep dogs and wolves away. But when our ideas or pride lead us to leave God's protection, then spiritual parasites like disease, moral torment and failure await us at the turn and will cling to us and make us suffer, taking away our life and our substance. These are all these things which are represented in the history of Israel by these enemies who come to attack and plunder them, as soon as Israel moves away from God. Jesus tells us that when demons find an empty house, and if in addition this house is swept and decorated – we can think of a form of philosophy or a superficial religion – these demons see it as an invitation to come and squat the house in number. God must really be invited to occupy all the rooms of this house, which, as you will have understood, represents our life.

There are religious demons, and the Bible mentions spirits that cause us to worship idols, and lying spirits in the mouth of the prophets. In Romans 1, Paul says that practices such as astrology, which is a deviation from the science of God, or the worship of earthly entities like the Queen of Heaven, which we must remember is not the mother of Jesus, but that of Christ's rival—a paradigm and mythological figures present in virtually every pagan religion in the world—will open the door to all manner of spiritual and moral disorder. We all experience loss or trauma, and if the processes of grieving and healing are not undertaken seriously, we will be dragging the pans the devil has tied us to. The devil fully enjoys his power every time he succeeds in making a son or a daughter of God, a person who is miserable or has no self worth. The areas from which God is absent and for which we have adopted substitutes as means of consolation, lead us not to freedom, but to compulsive behaviors. Alcohol, bulimia, drugs, sexual deviance and expedients, tattoos, piercings or dogs for some, photography for others… One of the most destructive substitutes for love for our personality is pornography. It now even affects our young children. Eye lust is a form of dishonesty. Let's understand that each person who gives himself up a little too freely is not anonymous, but this person has a name and a story. She is someone's daughter or son, brother or sister, and ultimately God's child. God created us so that we can look any person in the eye, without concealment, without ulterior motives and without feeling shame. He wants us true and if we have fallen he can restore us fully to our wholeness. But it is not without reason that Marx said: “Religion is the opium of the people”. Religion has many faces. Green activism, political parties, medicine, sport, music and now, the trends that spread through social networks, are comparable to religions, with their idols, their churches, their rules, their priests and their avengers. These venal things have come to fill the space left empty by a fragmentary or even absent knowledge of truth, and the philosophy of Marx is another such substitute. “Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless”, said a Solomon who one feels is disillusioned by the end of his life, in his Book of Ecclesiastes, after he had pursued all the achievements accessible to a man and who more is, to a king. So of course it's normal to have some hobbies and entertainment alongside what allows us to pay our rent. But if everything is permitted within the framework of things that are not expressly forbidden by God, everything does not edify, says the apostle Paul. Developing some creativity does not hurt if we can at the same time grow in our knowledge of God, of others and of ourselves. Demons like the morbid and the gloomy because that is their nature, and that is what we see everywhere. Let's not follow trends or fashions. It is therefore good to regularly look back on your life and ask yourself: what attracts me, is it life, love, truth, goodness? And if we have deviated from our trajectory, to make sure we get back on track. And the only way to get rid of the "false comforters" without seeing even worse things take hold is to submit the vacant space to the Holy Spirit by inviting him to fill us, by reading the Bible, by listening to songs of praise, praying, speaking to God in a new spiritual language and allowing God our Father to whisper in our ears. Jesus promised that he would send us the Spirit of comfort, and he did. For what was lacking to Solomon for his joy to be complete, if not the Presence in himself of an everlasting glory?

“For if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live. For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God. The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.” The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory”.   Romans 8: 13-17.

 

When a night dream comes and shatters the dream we had for our life.

I will now take the risk of sharing something very personal with you. When we talk about generalities, others don't identify much. But personal experiences speak to the fiber of man and to what constitutes his heart. Jesus often spoke to the heart of man, and not only with compliments.

Paul claims elsewhere “to walk without looking back”, in accordance with the words of his Lord, exhorting others to run in the career which is open to them, that is to say to lay hold by faith of what Jesus has accomplished for us. But Paul is tough with a soft heart. This is an aspect of being a Christian that is sometimes misunderstood. Perceived as a soldier when the truth has to make its way, the Christian nevertheless remains a personality sensitive to all aspects of being, and can be even more fragile. Because the present conflict will pass with its protagonists and its stakes, and what will last forever, is love. This Paul was a hothead with whom I would not dare identify myself even in thought. But I understand to some extent his moral conflict, because I too did not choose to place myself under the leadership of the Good Shepherd. My parents raised me in their tradition, which had never been a subject of great passion for me. I honored their choices out of respect for them and for this Jesus whom I perceived in a diffuse way through the rites. And although the heart of Catholicism very quickly appeared to me as a dark and lifeless thing, the day of my first communion was charged with emotion and conviction, in the prospect of an experience with Christ. As you might expect, I didn't feel anything, although I pretended otherwise, and I was very disappointed. But during the night which had followed this initiation, a spirit had presented itself to me. I had hoped for Jesus, but the spirit that approached me was frightening. Yet he had reassured me by making me feel beautiful, righteous, pure and deserving, because I was now on the good side of the world, having become a good person by obeying the Catholic faith. It's an experience that I'm sure a lot of people will relate to in one way or another. The world is unfortunately infested with seductive spirits of all kinds. They are looking for an ear and will take advantage of our openness to suggest things that will confuse us about God and his purposes for our lives. I could have yielded to this spirit of religiosity which proposed to accompany me. But there is in the hearts of children, a kind of instinct, or an innate sense of truth, and this has preserved me from the worst. Although I was taking communion at Mass but without understanding the occult significance of the rite, I did not give in to this misplaced veneration that characterizes Catholicism. I could clearly see in what poverty of spirit certain close or distant family members found themselves, who also showed a religious veneration that would be described as bigotry. We are the heirs of a religious unconscious rooted in Greco-Babylonian culture and I spoke last month about the place occupied by the so-called Queen of Heaven in the mythology of the nations that surrounded Israel, and the ramifications of this pagan culture in the world today through the traditional Christian faith.

But God had however seized the opportunity of this ceremony of integration into the Catholic faith to show me that my path was going to separate from those of the members of my family. Because shortly after the event, I had a dream from which I woke up with every detail in mind, a dream which in reality was a nightmare.

We were lucky, my family and I, to live on the shores of Lake Geneva in a sparsely populated area where nature had its rights. There was this beautiful fine gravel shore where small waves would come and lap, keeping the beach clean for most part of the year. The shoreline was lined with pine trees and a jetty allowed casting a fishing line, heaven for the little guys. Well, in this dream, we found out one day that a long boardwalk had been laid from the shore to a remote place in the middle of the lake. My parents seemed to be very excited about this achievement, and we all set off together to see where this walk would take us. We could soon see at the end of it, a construction that stood up and looked like a big castle reminiscent of those in fairy tales, or a kind of Disneyland castle like we saw in cartoons. The whole family happily followed this path, but I felt uncomfortable and dragged my feet. Then, suddenly, the boards became unstable under my feet, and to my amazement, my legs went through the rotting wood. I shouted at the top of my voice that they had to come back for me, but they didn't hear me. They were now far ahead, almost out of sight and moving ever closer to the vision. The dream had such an impact on me that I never talked about it. And when I finally shared it with this friend, because I remembered it when she was interested in finding her own path in life, and I thought maybe this dream could bring reflection, her deductions surprised me and paradoxically brought me back to my loneliness. She said that I should take my courage and cross this catwalk to return to the rest of my family, overcoming my feelings. She was right on one point: the shadows of my character inherited from the unhappy interactions with an evil world, are something I should no longer tolerate. But what she didn't know yet was that a few days later, there had been a second part to that dream.

I was again on this shore, but this time completely alone. The wooden pier was gone and there was no trace of the castle, as if all this had never existed. And my whole family was also gone. After the anguish and misunderstanding that the first dream had aroused, this second dream was nevertheless imbued with serenity and hope, because life continued in another way, bringing to light simple and usually unremarkable things, but whose beauty appeared to me in a new light. Captivated by a vision that was only a mirage, we had ignored them although they had always been there. These things were the real elements of the world. The light was that of a summer sky just after a late afternoon shower, when the air is clear again and the setting sun bathes the earth in a warm caressing light. The water was clear and it stirred in a perpetual movement a multitude of small stones, all different, and whose brilliance sprang up in this light. Not a sound came to disturb this picture, but the stones rubbed against each other by the movement of the wavelets produced a ringing sound similar to a song. Paul says in one of his letters, that he was caught up in paradise and that he heard ineffable words which it is not possible for a man to express. This dream was like an introduction to this reality of heaven and its hosts, in a version accessible to a ten-year-old kid, a sinner in every sense of the word and knowing nothing of the Bible. The closest thing to that impression came twelve or thirteen years later, when I found myself in the midst of a group of Christians who burst in a song in the languages of the spirit. I understood much later what is the meaning in God's eyes of all these precious stones, which are not shaped by the hand of man but which remain whole, although they are polished by circumstances.

 

Jesus has a very particular way of considering a family's unity:

“Do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division. From now on there will be five in one family divided against each other, three against two and two against three. They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law”.   Luke 12:51-53.

So to answer this friend, no return is possible in my family since technically, I did not leave it. But they went in search of a mythical Shangri-La and never returned. I can only go looking for them. You know, one day, my mom who always wants to do well, gave me a book that she would have liked me to read. She passed me several books that I didn't read for good reason, but the title of this one caught my eye : 'Rome sweet Rome', you get the pun. But Rome is a Disneyland like any other. Jerusalem is a Disneyland. What men of faith had in view has never been represented on earth. What men of faith had in mind has never been represented on earth. Abraham set out on a journey to the heavenly Jerusalem, not the city built by human hands, but the one which has eternal foundations and whose architect and builder is God. (Hebrews 11: 10). God's Jerusalem is not a pile of stones. It is not a political and religious organization. But it is his family, and it includes humanity built according to his concept, in all its richness and complexity. By making the path to Rome and to Babylon crumble under my feet, God had allowed my integrity to be preserved. I wasn't saved yet, but he would be able to present me with something else when the time came. The world and its religion are one and the same. The whole world is under the illegitimate tutelage of a rebellious spirit in whose hands our ancestors placed the power and prerogatives they had received from God, after they were deceived by this spirit and driven out of the Garden of Eden. The Christian religion is a gospel that we have also submitted to his supervision, and that he knew how to deactivate as it should. For the Gospel of Jesus Christ announces the return of humanity under the jurisdiction of God in the person of his Christ, and therefore, our unity is him and no one else !

“For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy”.  Colossiens 1:16-18.

“A man's precious treasure is activity” according to Proverbs 12:27. Like everyone else, I considered various options, such as learning to be a gardener to please my parents, becoming a photographer, and even becoming a travel writer, to give free rein to my aspirations. I took some Christian training to please my God. I pursued the things I had in my heart to try to find my way, and I probably could have made a little place for myself in the sun if I had really wanted it. But there was this place of ease, this refuge ready to welcome us between Rome and Babylon, and that is why God had said: “A man will leave his father and his mother and will cling to his wife”, in order precisely to spare us this kind of backtracking. And you know what God says about those who return to the world after tasting Christ? I leave it to you to discover it by clicking on this link to a specific passage from the Bible. A Christian is supposed to move away from the rudimentary things that come to us from the world, to progress in a spiritual attachment to Christ, and in this sense, I am what is called a backslidden Christian.

“And I saw that all toil and all achievement spring from one person’s envy of another. This too is meaningless, a chasing after the wind”.   Ecclesiastes 4: 4.

The wandering lasted long enough for the foundations of our marriage to crumble in contact with worldly vanities, and for our children to move away, each in pursuit of a more or less elusive dream. Now I pray that they return to the source of Life. You know what the saying goes, “Our children's wanderings are the result of our wanderings”. 

But since this experience and my baptism in the Holy Spirit at the age of twenty-two, my deep ambitions had changed. I simply wanted to be in my place, that is to say in the peace of God, and to consider things with patience like having eternity before me. For that is what Jesus promises to those who put their hand in his. In Psalm 131, the psalmist says:

“O Lord, my heart does not swell with pride, my eyes have not aimed too high, I have not embarked on projects too big, too complicated for me. Quite the contrary: I remained quiet and calm, like a weaned child carried by its mother. Yes, deep down I feel like the weaned child. Israel, trust in the Lord now and forever."

This psalm, which one might be tempted to attribute to a loser or for the least a man without ambition, was written by King David himself. We also read in Psalm 27:

“If my father and my mother should forsake me, the Lord would take me in. Teach me the way that you want me to follow, O Lord, and lead me by an even path, since my enemies lie in wait for me”.

Our enemies are those spirits of restlessness that drive us to want to live as if there were no God and as if existence stopped tomorrow, to satisfy traditions and to seek the recognition of men, to run frantically after immediate paradises, and not to dwell in the awareness of eternity. They are emergency policies that manipulate our fears and our credulity to make us accept the unacceptable, to ultimately destroy us. In chapter 4 of the epistle to the Hebrews, the author speaks of a rest, the rest of faith, as of the place that God has provided for his children to dwell there until the restoration of all things. Whereas those who have faith only in themselves will have deprived themselves of this security and will be in danger of being swept away. Flatterers are always one step ahead of your own ambitions. The world works by a game of mirrors. What do we see there, or who, do we see? God does not condemn the world because he had the idea. But he condemns the pride of man and his vanity which consists in thinking that everything he has acquired, he owes it to his qualities and his efforts. Or to think that the meaning of his life is in his success and in what he obtains, and not to constantly look up to God to seek his approval and that connivance with his children whom God cherishes, and who in the end is the true meaning of our life and our security. For what will the world be like when men can finally reveal the glory of God? In the current system, almost all of our effort is wasted chasing the wind. The glory of man is a very pathetic thing in the end and those who accompany aging people know it.

“For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul? For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what they have done”.   Matthew 16:25-27.

“You will be betrayed even by parents, brothers and sisters, relatives and friends, and they will put some of you to death. Everyone will hate you because of me. But not a hair of your head will perish. Stand firm, and you will win life.”.   Luke 21:17-19.

Not a single hair of your heads will be lost, Jesus promises us. When you live for yourself, you only have a few years to fulfill your ambitions, hence a lot of frustration, the manipulation of others and with anger sometimes, because things do not always turn out as we expected, and Jesus warns us sternly in this regard. But when one is dead to this world and to oneself, and one lives for God, one can consider things differently since one knows that nothing will be lost of all that one will have voluntarily put aside. I am not one of those courageous disciples who go from house to house to announce the good news, to heal the sick and to communicate Jesus to the children of peace, but here is what Jesus promises for them :

“Truly I tell you,” Jesus replied, “no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age: homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields—along with persecutions—and in the age to come eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last first.”   Mark 10:29-31.

 

Why was Jesus crucified?

You read the Gospels, Mark 11 for example, and you see the crowd that followed Jesus enter Jerusalem with him with cries of joy: “Hosanna to the King, son of David!”. And practically from one day to the next, the same crowd is turned over and shouts with irrational rage, “Crucify him !”. A similar experience happened to Paul and Barnabas when they visited Greece and Turkey a few years later. Almost elevated to gods when they performed a few miracles there, they very quickly became a scandal for the Ephesians, who wanted to kill them. What happened in the meantime and why this sudden reversal?

Still in relation to this dream, I could have thought that it meant that I would have my own activity independently of my family. I've always liked, alongside the landscapes I travel through somewhat out of relational desperation, to take snapshots to feed memories. I entertained myself for a few years doing commercial photography to promote the family business and my work was appreciated. But that was another concession, a distraction from the real concerns which I was trying to stifle. I must admit that unlike the apostle Paul, I am able to live and work with people who will perhaps die tomorrow and who by their choices will have devoted themselves to an eternity deprived of hope, without this causing me an insurmountable problem of conscience. However, when my father spent his last moments on his hospital bed, I could not hold back my sobs at the thought of never seeing again the man who had proved so strong, who had taught me so many things, who had done so much for me, and whom I had assisted during his last years but I was not able to bring him to the new birth, even though he continued to follow the mass on television. May God's mercy fill our shortcomings. Did Jesus take hold of his spirit to carry him into his heaven anyway? I continue to hope so, even though Jesus is clear about it in his word. I was overcome with anxiety for a while after his death. People don't like talking about death and even less about hell and the devil. They want to party, drive fast cars and not hear about the possible consequences.

The mass is a strange ceremony. Dangerous elements like the Word of God are manipulated there in a clever alchemy of rites and concepts from ancient Egypt and Babylon. The priests who administer this preventive vaccine against the true faith also act as firefighters, ensuring they take control of any fires that break out. The divinity of Jesus Christ is recognized only to submit it to a higher authority, which behind the masks of the Queen of Heaven and the “fathers of the church”, turns out to be that of Lucifer.

But Jesus knew exactly what hell is. He talks about it several times while warning us. Hell was not designed to receive men, but to punish the angels who fueled the rebellion against God. Hell is such a terrible place that Jesus chose to forgive even those who crucified him, in order to give them a chance to escape it. According to him, there is only one way to ensure our eternity with God, and that is by being constantly filled with the Holy Spirit and truth. Because everything plays out during this life and the notion of purgatory is also a Catholic fantasy which finds its origin in Tartarus of Greek mythology. Jesus had a passion for saving his contemporaries, and that is why his anger against the imposter religious spirit was justified. This is how he did two things to awaken consciences, two unforgivable things. Just after entering Jerusalem as king, he came to a beautiful-looking fig tree, and when he found no fruit there, he cursed it and the fig tree withered. Some objected that it was not the season for figs. And right after that, he turned over the tables of the merchants in the temple. The barren fig tree represents a people of God or a church that is pretending. It sustains itself but does not produce fruit for the Kingdom of God, nor is able to transmit the supernatural riches of God to men. As for the merchants of the temple, they have diverted the gift of God to their advantage, since God came to dwell with men to enrich us with the free gift of his Holy Spirit. Just as Paul and Barnabas dismissed the Queen of Heaven of the Greeks and the Ephesians, the sacrilege of Jesus is to have overthrown the altar of Mamon, the god of money, and the seats of Baal, the patrician gods. This is why the religious spirit as much as the worldly spirit hates true Christians, because they lack the most elementary respect towards the god of this world by not submitting to his rules. They preach a generosity that only God's provision can fuel, and which is a sign of the coming kingdom and the condemnation of the present world and its policy of finitude. Because as we know, by condemning to death the only true son of God on the pretext that he enlarged the boundaries of man, this sick and controlled world has publicly shown its sinister face and condemned itself.

 

Sometimes God speaks to a child, but really, he wants to talk to the adults.

In the first book of Samuel, we read the story of the child Samuel who, following a promise she made, was placed by his mother with the priests to serve them. We shudder for the child, because these priests do not fear God. For a long time they have shown themselves unworthy of their priesthood. One night, God calls the young boy.

“The boy Samuel ministered before the Lord under Eli. In those days the word of the Lord was rare; there were not many visions. One night Eli, whose eyes were becoming so weak that he could barely see, was lying down in his usual place. The lamp of God had not yet gone out, and Samuel was lying down in the house of the Lord, where the ark of God was. Then the Lord called Samuel. Samuel answered, “Here I am.” And he ran to Eli and said, “Here I am; you called me.” But Eli said, “I did not call; go back and lie down.” So he went and lay down. Again the Lord called, “Samuel!” And Samuel got up and went to Eli and said, “Here I am; you called me.” “My son,” Eli said, “I did not call; go back and lie down.” Now Samuel did not yet know the Lord: The word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him”.   1 Samuel 3.

If you do not know it, you can read the rest of the story by clicking on the link. To sum up, God charges young Samuel with a message that is very difficult to deliver and which concerns his masters, the servants of the temple. The old priest had become almost blind and he was heavy, the text tells us. We guess that he feels a certain disarray, because the religious practice has fallen asleep and too many concessions have got the better of his integrity, in particular because of the actions of his sons whom he no longer has the strength to rebuke. The latter have an immoral conduct and they also take advantage of their function to stuff themselves thus scandalizing the few faithful still diligent in the temple. Their table has become a trap… Sadness and disenchantment have taken hold of the old priest's psyche. Once the strength and enthusiasm of their youth is gone, religious people are disillusioned people. They doubt even God. So they comfort each other by denigrating those who think or do otherwise, especially when people come to question them as was the case with Jesus. Their ears have been closed to the truth, and God must now speak to them through an innocent child. God sometimes uses unconventional ways to speak to us. One can think of the donkey of a certain Balaam, another priest whose ears needed to be pulled. The old priest will recognize himself in the warnings that God gives them through this kid. But this will not be enough to drive him to true repentance. Soon, he, his sons and the people of Israel will lose their achievements and the priesthood, and even their lives. Because even when they are convinced deep down, many people who have worked for a long time in religion – and the same thing happens in the fields of science and medicine – will not dare to admit that they now see things differently. And it’s heartbreaking because out of cowardice and pride – what the Bible calls the fear of men as opposed to the fear of God – they continue to stand in the way of the salvation of their families and those around them.

“What then? What the people of Israel sought so earnestly they did not obtain. Those chosen among them (for their faith in Messiah) did, but the others were hardened, as it is written: “God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes that could not see and ears that could not hear, to this very day.” And David says: “May their table become a snare and a trap, a stumbling block and a retribution for them. May their eyes be darkened so they cannot see, and their backs be bent forever.” Again I ask: Did they stumble so as to fall beyond recovery? Not at all ! …” Romans 11: 7-11.

 

There is a rest for those who overcome the flesh.

As in understanding the Word of God, there are different layers in the meaning of dreams. Dreaming brings keys to understanding things in our present situation, but also in our future and even in the past. This dream that I had as a child and which highlights the loss of a family caught up in the pursuit of a utopia, sheds light on the serious and even terrible things that affect not just a family, but people of the whole earth. Because if we do not open our eyes to the issues that escape us because of the pursuit of chimeras, a pursuit in which we all indulge, we risk suffering a total loss. The world offers so many decoys and the devil puts bunnies in every hole to make sure that we lose sight of the goal, of the ultimate stake in our life. Disneyland was never a viable destination. Even Jesus had to overcome the temptation to build his own Disneyworld to be able to succeed in his mission. When he was led into the wilderness by the spirit to be tempted there, he had to overcome the temptation by fasting from everything except the word of God, which is the supreme weapon. For the devil was not long in approaching him. And after having tried to make him doubt the fact that he was still alive, on the justification of the use of miracles to relieve his own hunger, on his identity as a son of God and on the favorable time for his advent – without success, the devil used his going all. Having put on the mask of the Queen of Heaven, he proposed Jesus an alliance.

“The devil took him again to a very high mountain. There he showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their magnificence and said to him, I will give you all this power, and the glory of these kingdoms; for it has been given to me, and I give it to whom I will. So if you bow down to me, it will be all yours. Then Jesus said to him: Go away, Satan! For it is written: You shall worship the Lord your God and serve him alone." Matthew 4:10, Luke 4:6."

Satan was forced to leave Jesus alone, until a more favorable time, we are told. Because until the moment of his imprisonment, when Jesus returns to earth, Satan will never give up, and his game of temptation is up to the challenge. Satan had recognized who Jesus was and he had to bypass God's plan at all costs. And so, instead of waiting for God to put him in place, which would mean his own ousting, he was ready to concede him a supporting role in order to remain in power himself, and this supporting role would also have saved Jesus to have to go through the cross for the liberation of humanity. Satan knew that Jesus had all the qualities required to become an accomplished world leader. He could have failed in his royal mission by becoming a kind of prince before his time, not only over Israel, but the emperor of the world. If you can understand this, you can also understand what is at stake in your own destiny. Never negotiate a supporting role.

While waiting for the return of Jesus, God offers us a rest in the righteousness that Christ won for us by dying for us on the cross. But there will always be someone, pushed by I don't know what spirit of activism, to try to make us fall from this safe place. Because why wait forever for what we could get right now? You know that an evangelical movement has arisen recently with the ambition to bring renewal to the world. The intention seems good, but the reality is different. It is still a beautiful utopia, and it is unfortunately riddled with contributions from the New Age. Above all, we should learn to differentiate between renewal and true repentance, or all our efforts will be in vain. It is God – it is Jesus – who is the instigator and architect of the renewal of the world, and men are only his messengers.

How does Jesus save us? — By giving us his Holy Spirit.

I had thought of keeping this August column very short – without success – and I will add one more thing because it is important. What makes us fundamentally Christians? What does Jesus say? A story sheds light on this. One night, a holy man named Nicodemus came to find Jesus secretly. He was convinced that Jesus had been sent to them by God, but he wanted to ask him what was the essence of his message. Jesus answered him:

"Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is Spirit. Do not be surprised that I said to you: You must be born again. The wind blows where it wills, and you hear its sound; but you don't know where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit." Nicodemus then said to him: How can this be? Jesus answered him: You are the teacher of Israel, and you do not know these things!”.   John 3:5-10.

The drama that was unfolding in the time of Nicodemus within the Judaic faith is the same as that which is unfolding in the churches today. Like Nicodemus who thought he was an accomplished Jew, most Christians believe they are Christians. They have taken their catechism, gone through the sacraments, some pay their tithes and go to mass or worship on Sundays. But what Jesus is saying is that they are Christians of adhesion and of flesh, but they have not obtained the essential : They have not been renewed in their spirit and they do not even know that it exists. And Jesus is very clear about them : Those who are not born of water and the spirit cannot enter the Kingdom of God. It is not that God will exclude them from his kingdom, but they will simply not be able to enter it, because they are not of the same nature as Jesus. But the Kingdom of Jesus is at a level to which only those who have become his friends because they have received his promises can access. Religion has compartmentalized things so well that it lets us think that it is God who, on leaving the church, is going to put us in the elevator to heaven, and that Saint Peter is going to press the button that will take us on the right floor. The reality is more brutal because the elevator has no button and it is the angel of Hades who pilots it. Those who belong to Christ do not need an elevator since they are already in the Presence of Christ. This presence remains partly veiled from them as long as they are in their body, but Christ lives in them by his Holy Spirit and where Christ is, they will also be.

— Oh, but I'm Catholic. The Virgin Mary guards me and I have the certainty of having adhered to the only tradition which is approved by God. We have with us countless saints, the Queen of Heaven and all the riches established over centuries of tradition. If we were not in the truth, all the same, it would be known !

Well precisely : beware. Jesus invites us not to judge others so as not to play the devil's game and then be judged ourselves. But what should judge us is the Word of God, the Bible. If they were reading it for themselves, these traditional Christians would have a different background. They could understand that practicing ones religion before men is a trap, for God is not stingy of his warnings.

“Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate, wide is the way that leads to perdition, and there are many who enter through it. But narrow is the gate, narrow is the way that leads to life, and few find them. Beware of false prophets. They come to you in sheep's clothing, but inside they are ravenous wolves”.  Matthew 7: 13-15.

We sometimes quote this word that Mary said to the servants on the occasion of the miracle of the water changed into wine: “Do all that he tells you”. And this is where superficial Christians deceive themselves because they are not doing what Jesus told us to do. They don't seek the new birth, but are content with an old-fashioned religion. Jesus says in Luke 6: 46, “Why do you call me Lord, Lord! and don't you do what I say?”. He cites as an example a man who built his house on sand. The word of God heard and not digested and put into practice remains sand, for the cement of obedience is missing. Unable to resist, this man will finally be brought down by circumstances. Mary the mother of Jesus had made a vow to be the handmaid of the Lord. However, she had to convert at some point. We are told that she was one of the disciples who came together after Jesus' resurrection and ascension into heaven, and received the purifying fire of the Holy Spirit and speaking in tongues. Mary, obviously, was “born again” along with some of Jesus' brothers. She was born of the Spirit of her son after giving flesh to the Son of God.

But Jesus might want to say to Christians who haven't gotten the gist of his message what he says to the church at Sardis in the book of Revelation chapter 3 :

“So, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spit you out of my mouth. Because you say: I am rich, I have become rich, and I need nothing, and because you do not know that you are unhappy, miserable, poor, blind and naked, I advise you to buy gold tried in the fire, that you may become rich, and white garments, that you may be clothed and the shame of your nakedness not appear, and eye drops to anoint your eyes, that you may see.

On the day of Pentecost, the Spirit descended on those men who had prepared to receive it. Those who received it felt filled with new spiritual life. Carried by this presence, they came out of their walls and set off on the paths and on the roads, bearing witness and living henceforth from what this presence offered them. How does Jesus come to dwell in us today? Should I rub shoulders with Christians who will communicate this inner fire and this Presence to me? It is a possibility…

“After they had been severely flogged, they were thrown into prison, and the jailer was commanded to guard them carefully. When he received these orders, he put them in the inner cell and fastened their feet in the stocks. About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them. Suddenly there was such a violent earthquake that the foundations of the prison were shaken. At once all the prison doors flew open, and everyone’s chains came loose. The jailer woke up, and when he saw the prison doors open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself because he thought the prisoners had escaped. But Paul shouted, “Don’t harm yourself! We are all here!” The jailer called for lights, rushed in and fell trembling before Paul and Silas. He then brought them out and asked, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” They replied, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved—you and your household.” Then they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all the others in his house. At that hour of the night the jailer took them and washed their wounds; then immediately he and all his household were baptized. The jailer brought them into his house and set a meal before them; he was filled with joy because he had come to believe in God—he and his whole household”.   Acts 16: 23-34.

But above all, Jesus gives himself to us through the word he gave us in the Gospels. The world is crowded with deceiving spirits and without the support of this word, our spiritual experiences will very quickly degenerate into mystical bewilderment. I assure you that there is a real jungle away from the path. What must I do to be saved? You must receive the Lord Jesus, like the others. Receive him not in a weekly communion rite at church, receive him not just in your house, or in your head, but in your heart and in your spirit. Jesus wants to become part of you. He wants to communicate his nature, his thoughts and his life to you, and only then will you be saved.

— Oh, I am a Christian, but I live in this concrete world, among men, and I have to work to live. I thank God for all the things he lets me have. All right, we do indeed have the things of the world that are there to serve our growth and our interests. But John says, in 1 John 2:15:

“Love not the world, nor the things that are in the world. If someone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, does not come from the Father, but comes from the world”.

And in 1 Corinthians 7, Paul gives us some sound advice on whether to settle in this world by doing business, by getting married and starting a family for example. He says there's nothing wrong with having a spouse to share your life with. But from his own experience, he advises to stay as one is to have free rein. He says that the concerns of this life should not overburden and overwhelm us. His advice is for those who have decided to invest themselves in the communication of the Gospel.

“What I mean, brothers and sisters, is that the time is short. From now on those who have wives should live as if they do not; those who mourn, as if they did not; those who are happy, as if they were not; those who buy something, as if it were not theirs to keep; those who use the things of the world, as if not engrossed in them. For this world in its present form is passing away. I would like you to be free from concern.   1 Corinthians 7: 29-32.

And Jesus reminds us that if God is with us, we shouldn't worry too much about tomorrow.

hen Jesus said to his disciples: “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat; or about your body, what you will wear. For life is more than food, and the body more than clothes. Consider the ravens: They do not sow or reap, they have no storeroom or barn; yet God feeds them. And how much more valuable you are than birds! Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to your life? Since you cannot do this very little thing, why do you worry about the rest? “Consider how the wild flowers grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you, not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today, and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, how much more will he clothe you—you of little faith! And do not set your heart on what you will eat or drink; do not worry about it. For the pagan world runs after all such things, and your Father knows that you need them. But seek his kingdom, and these things will be given to you as well. “Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions and give to the poor. Provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven that will never fail, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. Watchfulness “Be dressed ready for service and keep your lamps burning, like servants waiting for their master to return from a wedding banquet, so that when he comes and knocks they can immediately open the door for him. It will be good for those servants whose master finds them watching when he comes. Truly I tell you, he will dress himself to serve, will have them recline at the table and will come and wait on them.   Luke 12: 22-37.

Among all that constitutes our reality, the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the only thing that is solid and unchanging. His coming Kingdom is the ultimate reality, everything else is transitory and is really only illusion! Jesus said:

“I gave them your word; and the world hated them, because they are not of the world, as I am not of the world. I do not ask you to remove them from the world, but to preserve them from evil. They are not of the world, as I am not of the world”.   John 17:14-16.

“Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will never pass away”.   Matthew 24: 35.

“Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law”. Romans 13: 8.

“Brothers and sisters, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death, so that you do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope. For we believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him. According to the Lord’s word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever. Therefore encourage one another with these words”.   1 Thessalonians 4: 13-18.

 

Recently, a whole section of evangelical Christianity has fallen by following those who are now considered the new apostles. Broadly, their motto is : “We must win the world for Jesus”, with the key being the domination of Christians over culture and over all the important aspects of society – their now famous "seven mountains", in reference perhaps to the seven hills of Rome or of the Roman empire –, a political conquest which once achieved, will signify the reign of Jesus on earth. This understanding can be attractive because it ignores the idea of an end of the world but ensures a smooth transition between the reign of Satan and that of Christ Jesus. The approach is not unlike, at another time and in other circumstances, that of the Jesuits of sinister memory, and more recently, that of Scientology which tried to infiltrate media and political circles. Those brothers refuse violence, however, but rather engage in psychological and emotional warfare, carried by the music of Bethel and Hillsong. Let's wish them good luck in their conquests, even if they face great disappointment as we will see later.

When his disciples asked Jesus for some advice on how to approach the end times, Jesus began by telling them: “Listen, be very careful that no one leads you astray”. Jesus indeed knew that our common enemy is a master in the art of mystification. The devil has rubbed shoulders with hundreds of generations of men, and for him it is a game, cruel of course, but it is his pleasure to want to destroy men by misleading them in every way imaginable. The Bible says he prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Don't worry, a child can resist him if he stays in the truth. The Bible is full of warnings about his tricks and about the recovery that takes place, first and foremost through religion.

• “Take care that no one misleads you”. Jesus in Matthew 24: 4 and Mark 13: 5.
• “Little children, let no one deceive you. He who practices justice is just, as he himself is just. He who sins is of the devil, because the devil sins from the beginning. The Son of God appeared in order to destroy the works of the devil”. John in 1 John 3: 7.
• “I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel— not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed.” Galatians 1: 6-8.
• "In connection with the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our reunion with him, we pray you, brethren, that you will not be easily shaken in your common sense, and that you will not be disturbed, either by any inspiration, either by some word, or by some letter that seems to come from us, as if the day of the Lord had already arrived. Let no one deceive you in any way; for the apostasy must have happened before, and the man of sin must have appeared, the son of perdition, the adversary who exalts himself above all that is called God or what one adores, even sitting down in the temple of God, proclaiming himself God”. Paul in 2 Thessalonians 2: 1-4.
• “Let no one deceive you with empty talk; for it is because of these things that the wrath of God comes upon the children of disobedience”. Paul in Ephesians 5:6
• "I'm coming soon. Hold back what you have, so that no one takes your crown”. Jesus in Revelation 3: 11.

 

In 2 Corinthians 4: 3-4, Paul says:

“And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel that displays the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.”

The criticism that can be made of religions as a whole is that they deal on the intellectual level with questions that are of a spiritual order. When Jehovah's Witnesses approach you to try to win you over to their way of seeing things, they will subject you to a whole intellectual argument, much like I do on this page, except that they will not let you read the biblical context on which their words should be based. They will use a verse here and there, and usually out of context. Their Bible has also been subtly modified from the accepted versions in order to support their argument. Yet the Bible is a perfectly coherent whole and it does not need to be falsified to remain credible. It is our understanding that must reach its level. One cannot, as many Catholics do, say that one believes in the New Testament, but that the Old has no place. That would be like saying you got a nice car, but you don't need its engine anymore and just go downhill. It's living in the attic and the annex that we built in the castle but abandoning the main floor. To say that we accept that God is nice but that we refuse to believe that he will punish anyone is to believe that we are more just than he is, and that is rebellion. The Word is the Spirit of God, and the Spirit is the Word. In 1 Corinthians 2: 14, Paul says:

“But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.”

Paul also says at the beginning of this chapter that he came to them (the Corinthians) in weakness and trembling, “that his word and his preaching should not be in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power”. This is the register where the true gospel of Christ lies: in a demonstration of power to heal, to set free, to convince people by communicating to them this inner Presence, so that these signs serve as proof to them that God indeed dwells among men, which is the meaning of the name Emmanuel.

“The mystery hidden from all times and in all ages, but revealed now to his saints, to whom God willed to make known what is the glorious richness of this mystery among the Gentiles, namely: Christ in you, the hope of glory”. Colossians 1: 26-27.

 

So what gospel should we embrace and pass on?

Evangelism is essential, and it is urgent to bring the true message of Jesus Christ to the world, as long as we have the possibility. For the night is coming, says Jesus, when no one will be able to work. But let us be careful not to be caught up in a fad or simply taken over by religion. Men and women who feel drawn to the Truth in the person of Christ must understand that they are embarking on a trapped journey. John Bunyan once wrote the famous short story "The Pilgrim's Progress." It has been read by countless people, including Queen Elizabeth II who says she was greatly inspired by it. This fictional story relates the adventures of a young Christian on his way to New Jerusalem. He navigates between inspiring and authentic encounters, and those that arise on his journey like traps and that he must learn to identify. Among these traps are a number of false virtues from which he must extricate himself with great difficulty. The main lesson I took away from the story at the time I read it was that there is no highway to God – but you would have guessed that. On the other hand, what was for me much more painful to notice are the solicitation that many churches practise. They no longer lead people to Jesus, but dangle them to other fatherhoods, other Jerusalems, other adoptive mothers. The devil is a thief said Jesus, and what he is taking away are human beings. A film is currently causing a great controversy in the United States, which highlights the trafficking of human beings and denounces the networks which kidnap, mainly children but also young women, to deliver them to people in prey to all kinds of torments, so that they use them as kind of punching bags or scapegoats. Stalkers and beaters are trained to make themselves attractive to captivate children in order to withdraw them from their parent's attention until a gang makes them disappear.

Attacking those who are weaker is a turn of mind that affects us all to some degree. Dolorism has nothing to do with Christian virtues. It is to think that Christ suffered for himself. It is to imagine gaining a right to heaven by one's own virtue. Seeking to soften the torments of our condition as sinners by attacking the weakest, or simply by enjoying such a spectacle, is one of the many ways we have to sublimate the suffering that indwells us. Why are these television productions designed to alienate children and young people from the relative safety of a family circle tolerated? What are we looking at? Are we free from this hypnotic fascination that the suffering of others can generate? What does pornography represent if not an unconscious pleasure in seeing the daughter of another man and a woman suffer, themselves no doubt consumed by torment. Why do people take one or more pets? A lesser evil compared to the spectacle of exasperated parents and hysterical young children. From kindergarten, children are violated in their conscience by unnatural teachings. Then they will be forced to learn that man is an evolved ape who created himself and who therefore has the inalienable right to dispose of the lives he gives birth to. Mobbing has become one of the main causes of absenteeism at work. Health care is the new substitute for religion, with its churches, followers and inquisition. We are now under the tyranny of the Woke and LGBT movements which have managed to subvert many people's common sense to the point where journalists will routinely accuse those who uphold a semblance of truth of being "venom spitting haters". This movement of values inversion, which affects society as a whole, does not spare the churches. Many have adopted a liberal theology which even proposes to produce a new version of the Bible, expurgated of all its "contradictions", in order to accommodate each divergent view, a Bible also enriched by the experience of other religions.

“Help, Lord, for no one is faithful anymore; those who are loyal have vanished from the human race. Everyone lies to their neighbour; they flatter with their lips but harbour deception in their hearts. May the Lord silence all flattering lips and every boastful tongue— those who say, “By our tongues we will prevail; our own lips will defend us—who is lord over us?” “Because the poor are plundered and the needy groan, I will now arise,” says the Lord. “I will protect them from those who malign them.” And the words of the Lord are flawless, like silver purified in a crucible, like gold[c] refined seven times. You, Lord, will keep the needy safe and will protect us forever from the wicked, who freely strut about when what is vile is honoured by the human race”.  Psalm 12.

This is why we must learn the principles of the Kingdom of God now and apply them on a personal level, and not wait for the world to change, because it will not change globally or yes it will but not for the better. These are individuals who are saved. We will all have to confront our God sooner or later, and we have everything to gain by taking the initiative. Because the reign of Satan is now, and none of us completely escapes his influence. Addicts to Netflix productions are not the only ones to be under his control. The brave grandmother who gets her information from the television news and who religiously watches the Catholic channel... If you do not believe that the Bible is the only source of truth in this world, you are captive to the schemes of the devil. But "my kingdom is not of this world" said Jesus. His Kingdom is not applicable to this world by a simple update. As it happened in the time of Noah, Jesus tells us, the world is doomed. It will have to undergo a “big cleaning”, a formatting, before being rebuilt on entirely new bases. And this is where the theology of the New Apostolic Reformation comes up against an impossibility. If we refer to chapter 17 of the Book of Revelation which mentions seven mountains which are also seven kings, but in reality ten, of which most have been and two are still to come, we read what seems a priori to be the rebirth of the Roman Empire, which many scholars equate with the founding of Europe. This political revival will be followed by another government which may be that of the Antichrist – a very short but an absolutely terrible period. Eventually we come to that other kingdom which is said to have no end. It is hope that carries Christians : the reign of Christ on earth. However, it is not suggested that Christians will establish this reign by being themselves established in the world. On the contrary, the Bible suggest that remaining Christians and Jews will be fought and overcome during the period of the Antichrist.

“It was given power to wage war against God’s holy people and to conquer them. And it was given authority over every tribe, people, language and nation. All inhabitants of the earth will worship the beast—all whose names have not been written in the Lamb’s book of life, the Lamb who was slain from the creation of the world”. Revelation 13: 7-8, (Daniel 7: 21).

The only hope left to us is that of this sudden "rapture" announced by Jesus and the apostles, before this period. Because the Bible says that believers converted to Christ are not destined to suffer the wrath that comes. But then it says in verses 12 to 14 of Revelation 17:

“The ten horns you saw are ten kings who have not yet received a kingdom, but who for one hour will receive authority as kings along with the beast. They have one purpose and will give their power and authority to the beast. They will wage war against the Lamb, but the Lamb will triumph over them because he is Lord of lords and King of kings—and with him will be his called, chosen and faithful followers.”

For it is indeed the Lamb who will overcome the enemies of God. But he will only do it when they are going to attack him head-on. Let us remember that Satan made a first monumental error by nailing Jesus to the cross. This blunder cost him the legitimacy of the domination he exercised over men by means of our guilt. It is written that the Antichrist will go so far as to sit in the temple of God and proclaim himself "god". This will be his second fatal error, and it is the sign that the angels in heaven have been waiting for two thousand seven hundred years, when the prophecy of Daniel 11: 31 was written, a prophecy underlined in red by Jesus in Matthew 24: 15 and Mark 13: 14. Then an unimaginable thing will happen: the Lamb will come down from heaven in all his glory, accompanied by a multitude of men and women having put on their glorified and immortal bodies. God does not know conventions and political correctness and I would be tempted to laugh to myself thinking of the terror of evil men who take pleasure in distorting his creation, and that of their new Hitler who in full coronation, when he will be seen live on all the televisions of the world, signing in this odious act of presumption the definitive victory of Satan over the God of Creation, will pass in a second from the state of adored world leader to that of a pinch of ashes carried away by an air blow, at the same time that all the machinations of the wicked fomented throughout history will disappear in smoke. But that would be to ignore the millions of victims that Satan has made over the centuries and until this recent period.

“Then the glory of the Lord will be revealed, and all people will see it together. The Lord has spoken!” A voice said, “Shout!” I asked, “What should I shout?” “Shout that people are like the grass. Their beauty fades as quickly as the flowers in a field. The grass withers and the flowers fade beneath the breath of the Lord. And so it is with people. The grass withers and the flowers fade, but the word of our God stands forever.”   Isaiah 40: 5-8.

 

The Revival : It's of no use to exchange roles or reverse the priorities.

“Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and proclaim to her that her hard service has been completed, that her sin has been paid for, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins. A voice of one calling: “In the wilderness prepare the way for the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be raised up, every mountain and hill made low; the rough ground shall become level, the rugged places a plain”.  Isaiah 40: 1-4.

Why are the things of God being prepared in the wilderness, and not in the great established churches or in the public square? Why is God's love not widely shared, for example through television? We find an element of answer in chapter 2 of the book of Hosea. After having reproached his wife for having been with all her lovers, after having let her reap the fruits of her pride and of her disordered passions, and after having turned his back on her until she became aware of her bad behavior, God rehabilitates her and offers her complete redemption. But he wishes to test her sincerity, and for that, he leads her to the wilderness or in other words, he separates her from her circle of friends, from her comforts and from her habits. Jesus said that we should not throw our pearls before swines, lest they trample on them and then attack us. Taken as a group, we tend to behave like pigs with regard to the hand that God extends to us. So he separates us and takes us aside to have a long conversation with us. How long are we willing to stay with him before returning to our infidelities? Jesus does not want to spend eternity with servants, that is, with religious people who do things out of duty while minding their own business. But he wants to surround himself with sincere friends. A person who is precious to me recently reminded me that I too can easily become superficial and make certain things like simple formalities. If we don't put all our sincerity in the service of Jesus, the things we do for others will not have meaning for them. Anything short of conviction is sin, the Bible tells us. If I don't have love, what I do for others is of absolutely no profit to me, says Paul. If we don't love God and our neighbor with all our heart, we are holding back the fundamental thing that our neighbor is waiting for. Because God is love and we are his arms.

“Therefore I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the wilderness and speak tenderly to her. There I will give her back her vineyards, and will make the Valley of Achor a door of hope. There she will respond as in the days of her youth, as in the day she came up out of Egypt. “In that day,” declares the Lord, “you will call me ‘my husband’; you will no longer call me ‘my master I will remove the names of the Baals from her lips; no longer will their names be invoked. In that day I will make a covenant for them with the beasts of the field, the birds in the sky and the creatures that move along the ground. Bow and sword and battle I will abolish from the land, so that all may lie down in safety. I will betroth you to me forever; I will betroth you in righteousness and justice, in love and compassion. I will betroth you in faithfulness, and you will acknowledge the Lord”.   Hosea 2: 14-21.

 

The Gospel is offered to the world as a way out.

It is not for nothing that it is called : the Gospel of salvation in Jesus Christ. This salvation is of the same nature as the ark which saved Noah and his family, as well as the animals of the earth, from a destruction which surprised all who were not prepared for it. God loves us and he wants to spare us. Jesus said :

“All who have come before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep have not listened to them. I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved. They will come in and go out, and find pastures. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.”  John 10: 8-10.

He also says: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his field. It is the smallest of all seeds; but, when it has grown, it is taller than the vegetables and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the sky come to dwell in its branches”. The Greek words for “come to dwell” suggest moving from one place to another. For a time, we might need this providential refuge above the vegetables.

The Book of Revelation tells in detail what the world will have to go through during the "judgment of the gods". Let us remember what happened in Babel which is ancient Babylon, after men decided to come together “to make a name for themselves”. These days, many church businesses that claim to be Christian are driven by human concerns. Does God really need us to build him a house here on earth? Does he need an ecumenism? The Heaven of Heavens cannot contain him and the earth is his footstool, the Bible tells us. Coming together to worship God in spirit and in truth is a good and worthy thing, but seeking a so-called "Atmosphere of Glory" can quickly become unreasonable and constitute a form of idolatry. Several movements have been drawn into a quest for signs instead of a quest for the Truth. Wouldn't this just be another form of recuperation of Christians into the worship of the Queen of Heaven? Some, religiously serve religion while others are worshipers of worship. All these things will wither and disappear under the breath of God and only the fruit of his word will remain. The earth is going to be entirely sifted or threshed, Jesus tells us. The chaff will be carried away by the wind and only the good grain will remain, which will be reaped. This judgment is to preserve those who will be hidden in the new ark, which is Christ Jesus. Whereas in the mind of the "new apostles" revival will be brought to the world by men, and the return of Jesus will follow, in the mind of God, God is looking for men whose hearts are prepared and contrite so that they take it to heart to warn others by announcing his plan of salvation. But worldwide renewal will follow the return of Jesus to earth. Paul said to Timothy:

«You, however, know all about my teaching, my way of life, my purpose, faith, patience, love, endurance, persecutions, sufferings—what kinds of things happened to me in Antioch, Iconium and Lystra, the persecutions I endured. Yet the Lord rescued me from all of them. In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, while evildoers and impostors will go from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, and how from infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work».   2 Timothy 3: 10-17

Jesus told his disciples that the servant is not greater than his master. If they crucified the master, can we legitimately think that they will now establish his servants at the head of their affairs? And if they establish them, will these servants still be servants of Christ, or will they have become servants of the world? This duality reminds us of the bargain offered to Jesus when he was tempted by the devil in the wilderness. The problem with these sectarian movements, and when I say sectarian I mean: deviating from the truth, because Christianity began as a sect of Judaism if you want to call it that, is that they contribute to a false image of Christianity and therefore, of Christ himself and his plan for the world. Yet the movement in question seeks precisely to promote a living and conquering Christianity, integrated into the world and into culture. It is mainly aimed at young people. But what is the reality? You know the signs that Jesus established that allow you to recognize those who obey him. Now when you observe the movement from within as it was given to me for three years, you realize that the Spirit of Jesus is no more there than elsewhere. At most, you encounter above-average conviction and enthusiasm, but which seem forced. This climate will favor spiritual demonstrations. The Christians of the new apostolic reformation say: we want to receive more from God! We want to go to Redding in Bill Johnson's church to receive a “spiritual anointing”. We want to be “activated” so that we can work miracles. The attitude is dangerous, because it opens to all excesses.

 

About the Bethel experience : Beware of the wrong kind of fire ! Leviticus 10:1

Whereas in the Bible, it is God who tells us: “I want to receive more of you! I would like you to really walk with me, because then everything that is mine will also be yours”. We do not have faith in a gift, in an anointing, in a blessing, in the spiritual mantle that has been passed on to us by the apostle of our congregation or that we have "sucked up" from the grave of a deceased preacher as it is the custom of some, but our faith is in God. At their special meetings at the mother church in California, where the young people are supposed to receive their "baptism of fire", they are seen tossed about and behaved like animals, under the influence of real gurus. These spiritual manifestations are part of a demonic drift towards the spirits of the New Age. The influence is exercised to varying degrees in the communities that claim to belong to the movement, and some have managed to keep a certain distance from these practices. But should we not warn young people who are looking for an authentic experience with the Holy Spirit? Among those who have received this "anointing of Bethel", many complain afterwards that they are no longer themselves and they have no rest. To rub shoulders with them, and see them constantly jump and contort, is pitiful. In fact, there is great confusion within the movement itself, but those who dare to speak out are then asked to leave.

 

// March 2024.

Rereading this monthly column after a few months, I think I must moderate my comments, particularly on the subject of the Bethel Church. Someone was talking about this very large church because of the number of young people who go through its seminars and the teachings given there, and said that in all movements that take on a certain magnitude, there are errors and excesses and people who perhaps bring at a given moment an influence that is questionable. But there are also very beautiful things happening there and many young people come to know the Gospel in this context. We must not discredit an entire movement because of a few errors, because God does not reject anyone on the basis of a few errors, if things correct themselves with time. I completely agree with this analysis. //

 

Does God speak to us ?

In reality, God has already made available to us everything that contributes to living a powerful Christianity. But we need to be renewed in our understanding so that we grasp what are the nature and the prerogatives of this new man whom we must put on. If we want to serve God, we must seek him, get to know him by reading and studying the Bible, listening to the right messages and praying. It is we who enter into a new identity through obedience to faith. The same goes for acts of faith. When we are in Christ, ie in this position that Christ acquired us in the spiritual realm, then all the promises of the Bible become yes and amen. We just have to focus on the healing and call on the reality we see in the spirit, to get it. Where personal development and Christianity diverge decisively is obviously in the communion with God. Moreover, when you tell a person who has tried personal development that the God who accompanies you is a person who has feelings and who speaks to you, the person generally remains bewildered. Of course, Jesus does not often speak to us as if he were a friend, unless we are really buddy with him like Moses, or like Crocodile Dundee according to his own words. However, if we are ready to obey his suggestions without "dropping them", the Spirit who accompanies us will certainly speak to us. This is why Paul says, "Grieve not the Spirit." God gives us his Holy Spirit and we therefore have “the mind of Christ”. This thought is based on the word of God, which the Spirit reminds us of each time it is applicable. Hence the importance of reading it regularly, because the Bible is also the criterion by which we discern whether this word truly comes from God. God will never contradict the rules he has set out in the Bible. The Spirit of Jesus is also the spirit of prophecy. The spirit must remain subjected to the prophets and by the way, the prophets that are from God don't lead you by their words but they confirm what the Lord already showed or told you.

“And I will pray to the Father, and he will give you another Counselor, that he may dwell with you forever, the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows not; but you know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you. I will not leave you orphans, I will come to you”.   John 14: 16-18

The Spirit of Jesus within us is not silent, but we must both release that word and keep it in subjection to the spirit. This spirit guides us, instructs us, warns us, protects us, and He edifies.

“Seek charity. Also aspire to spiritual gifts, but especially to that of prophecy. … He who prophesies, speaks to men, edifies them, exhorts them, consoles them”. 1 Corinthians 14: 13

“May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the communication of the Holy Spirit be with you all”.   2 Corinthians 2: 13

In reality, God has a thousand and one ways of speaking to us. He prepares us through dreams, through the interactions we have with others. He can use everything in the world and around us to communicate his thoughts to us, even the television news, as long as we can interpret things in the right manner, because the devil does the same.

 

Let's not settle for an adulterated gospel.

“He gives power to the weak and strength to the powerless. Even youths will become weak and tired, and young men will fall in exhaustion. But those who trust in the Lord will find new strength. They will soar high on wings like eagles. They will run and not grow weary. They will walk and not faint.”    Isaiah 40: 29-31.

The New Age precisely. Are these things actually new as their name suggests? If you talk about healing, about spirituality, with “open” people, you will be welcomed, at least at first. Almost everyone is interested in holistic health, well-being and personal development, and therefore in God. But if you have had an authentic experience, you will understand that the word God does not have the same meaning for everyone. God as vital energy, yes! God as beauty, peace and serenity, absolutely! God as the power of our will and the projection of our positive thinking, certainly since it is the basis of personal development. God as a protective entity, Our Lady of Lourdes, Fatima, Guadalupe, Our Lady of Perpetual Help, Black or White Virgin, from here or elsewhere, why not ! Anything that contributes to a caring environment without requiring our full adherence and conversion is considered welcome. There is a word to describe this synergy of sources and means : syncretism. It is a gathering of disparate doctrines occurring within the framework of religion or esotericism. Syncretism is the result of the integration of environmental pressures on the initial doctrine. Basically, it's allowing all the influences to come together in order to please everyone.

And this is precisely what happened in the 5th century, when, under the pressure of a certain number of faithful who were also worshipers of Cybele and Isis, Catholicism integrated the cult of the Virgin, and this cult has quickly become a fundamental and unavoidable aspect of Catholicism. Marian worship has now supplanted the knowledge of Christ in the minds of many believers. Where do errors and scandals come from? Catholics do not read the Bible but they defer to the decisions of their clergy. If they read the Scriptures, they would know what God – what Jesus – thinks of syncretism, and they would also know where the cult of the Virgin has its origins. They would know that Satan disguises himself as an angel of light to approach simple people, and sow a seed which, once buried in the soil of the ignorance of the people, will produce an ineradicable tree. They would know that Satan works miracles, and they would know that the Antichrist, whose kingdom is coming, will do very great wonders by the power of Satan, to captivate his audience.

Did Jesus say that his gospel would be preached to the ends of the earth and “then his kingdom will be manifest”? Did he ask us to integrate all the cultures and religions of the world into his doctrine to achieve the reign of God on earth? Will the wicked have sudden enlightenment and pledge allegiance to God? Will the devil himself become the chief minister of Jesus Christ? You see how far one must push this reasoning. Because in reality, this is not at all what God envisions for the world. In the Gospel, I read rather that it is written: “This good news of the kingdom will be preached in all the world, as a testimony to all nations. Then will come the end”. He says elsewhere that “The men of Nineveh shall arise in the day of judgment with this generation and condemn it, because they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and behold, there is here more than Jonas”. What Jesus means by this is that when all the nations and peoples of the world have been able to hear the message of the Gospel, thus having had the possibility of accepting Christ the Savior or of rejecting him, then a fair judgment may take place. The judgment of this world is the judgment of the nations, with regard to their position in relation to the love of neighbor, and it is the end of the system or the "cosmos" governed by Satan, which for the moment remains, by the will of the peoples, the "prince of this world of darkness".

What the pope preaches on the one hand, and these new evangelical apostles on the other hand, is a very different message. Would Jesus' thought have evolved since he was teaching the crowds and would we have received new information that makes the Bible and the teaching of the apostles obsolete? Or are we prey to seducing spirits who, by wanting to deviate the Gospel from its axis which is the cross, seek to make it miss its target? The venture would not be new, as this tactic has been used repeatedly and successfully in the past.

How we benefit from letting God speak to us.

“I heard an unknown voice say, “Now I will take the load from your shoulders; I will free your hands from their heavy tasks. You cried to me in trouble, and I saved you; I answered out of the thundercloud and tested your faith when there was no water at Meribah. “Listen to me, O my people, while I give you stern warnings. O Israel, if you would only listen to me! You must never have a foreign god; you must not bow down before a false god. For it was I, the Lord your God, who rescued you from the land of Egypt. Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it with good things. “But no, my people wouldn’t listen. Israel did not want me around. So I let them follow their own stubborn desires, living according to their own ideas. Oh, that my people would listen to me! Oh, that Israel would follow me, walking in my paths! How quickly I would then subdue their enemies! How soon my hands would be upon their foes! Those who hate the Lord would cringe before him; they would be doomed forever. But I would feed you with the finest wheat. I would satisfy you with wild honey from the rock.”. Psalm 81.

The great misfortune which seems to be the fatality of Israel but also that of Christians, is that we do not listen to God speaking to us in the Bible. We prefer to turn to other voices, voices that come out of nowhere, to hear fables and inventions – a propensity that is not new since Eve already demonstrated it in the Garden of Eden. God's heart is really sick, and we understand that. Why does our God turn out to be a God jealous of our obedience and in reality an exclusive God? Can't there be many paths leading to him, many approaches and many Christs? Observing the society and people around me, at least those who mention the word God in their talks, a word comes to mind: inconsistency. The dictionary of synonyms defines it as: absurdity, confusion, contradiction, unreason, fantasy, ignorance, illogicality, imprudence, inattention, incoherence, unconsciousness, thoughtlessness, levity. The attitude of most people towards God is unfortunately characterized by this inconsistency, and if I push the reasoning a little bit, I must admit that from a certain level the term also applies to my attitude towards what I believe, so fear not: we are in good company. But why do we behave inconsequently towards God, and what could be the consequences for us of our recklessness and I would say perhaps: of our lack of love and passion for our Creator? Why does God remain in most people's minds a harsh and demanding master? Is it not because we are torn between our consecration to God and our attraction to the world?

Do you even know who you are?

We do not always realize that we are the stake of a fierce struggle. This world is extraordinary in a way, and it has something to fascinate us. And if God asks us not to love the things that are in the world, it is so that we no longer behave like willing hostages of a seditious and illegitimate spiritual government, which to protect itself from the judgment of God uses us like a human shield. The whole teaching of the Bible is based on this: revealing to us our true identity which is not a priori that of a man or a woman, an American, Swiss, French, Indian or African, nor that of an entrepreneur or a simple worker. Nor is our identity that of a Catholic or an Evangelical, or even that of a Christian. The identity in which God places us is that of Sons of God, regardless of our gender and our social, religious or cultural background. God places at the disposal of each one, all the inheritance brought by Jesus Christ. Jesus told his disciples: “If you believe in me, you will also do the things that I do, and you will do even greater things, because I am going to the Father”. In other words: you will heal the sick, you will cast out demons and restore people to their wholeness, loving them with all your heart. You will do for others whatever you would like to be done for you, for that is what the law is all about and what the prophets brought. And you will endure being persecuted for your righteousness, because you are henceforth the sons of God, and what awaits you is without common measure with the sufferings of this life. And to achieve this, Jesus teaches us how to free ourselves from this grip inherited from the world and how to align ourselves with his Spirit, so that when the day comes, we do not perish with those whom God is going to judge, that is to say the wicked spirits in the celestial world, but that we are instantly transplanted into the reality of the Kingdom of Jesus, because we will have received his truth and will belong to him.

We find in the person of Jesus two very different but complementary aspects.

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me; he has appointed me to preach Good News to the poor; he has sent me to heal the brokenhearted and to announce that captives shall be released and the blind shall see, that the downtrodden shall be freed from their oppressors, and that God is ready to give blessings to all who come to him”. Luke 4: 18-19

These words from the book of Isaiah were taken up on his behalf by Jesus when he was teaching on a Sabbath day in the synagogue of Nazareth, the city which he had seen him grow up. People were at first in awe of his words. But then Jesus began to warn them that no prophet is well received in his homeland. He is basically telling them that everything they hear and see charges them with responsibility, and that they will have to account for it. So they all got very angry and drove him out of town. "Who does he think he is?" Jesus is the good shepherd who has a heart for his people, which is why God also established him to be the judge of nations and of men. When, as a young Christian, I began to read the Gospels and the Bible, I was surprised by the animosity that reigns against Jesus, a son of God who defends our interests as sovereign men. And contrary to what I had been taught in the Catholic catechism, it was not the Roman occupiers who hated him. They would have respected him, as shown by this centurion who came to ask him to heal his servant, and even Pilate. No, the worst enemies of Jesus and later of his disciples were their unconverted co-religionists. How can we explain this visceral hatred, if not by the fact that some are inhabited by the spirit of God, and the others by the spirit of the world, that is to say of the devil? The devil knows his judgment is near and he becomes enraged when he feels he is losing ground. The wars of religion claimed millions of victims among Christians alone, for similar reasons. Our 21st century will be characterized by a new extermination: that of the saints of God. From now on, the devil no longer needs to raise a religion against his dissidents, because the information has already passed within the wider society. By a masterful sleight of hand, Christians are now the haters, the retrogrades, the refractory to the change of mentalities and to the great globalist party. Jesus allowed himself to be crucified because God wanted it so, and his victory was all the more striking. Christians will die as martyrs for some, Jews too. And when the forces of evil think they have defeated them, the unthinkable will happen.

“O Zion, messenger of good news, shout from the mountaintops! Shout it louder, O Jerusalem. Shout, and do not be afraid. Tell the towns of Judah, “Your God is coming!” Yes, the Sovereign Lord is coming in power. He will rule with a powerful arm. See, he brings his reward with him as he comes. He will feed his flock like a shepherd. He will carry the lambs in his arms, holding them close to his heart. He will gently lead the mother sheep with their young”.  Isaiah 40: 9-11

In the Book of Revelation in chapter 22, Jesus takes the words of Isaiah 40 for himself, thus he reveals his divine identity to us.

“Do not seal up the prophetic words in this book, for the time is near. Let the one who is doing harm continue to do harm; let the one who is vile continue to be vile; let the one who is righteous continue to live righteously; let the one who is holy continue to be holy.” “Look, I am coming soon, bringing my reward with me to repay all people according to their deeds. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.”   Revelation 22: 10-12.

Who do you think is Christ's foe?

If we still had some doubt about the divinity of Jesus and about his intentions, we are now settled. We are at the antipodes of the image of the little Jesus born in a manger, represented in the arms of his mother. An image which, it is important to emphasize, is not inspired by the Bible but is a resurgence of the Babylonian religion. Tammuz, who was born on December 25 according to tradition – December 25 having been designated by the Catholic Church to be the fictitious date of the birth of Christ in order to Christianize a pre-existing Roman feast, that of the unconquered Sun –, Tammuz therefore, who was represented in the arms of Semiramis, the one who was once called "the mother of god" because of her union with Kush, a cursed descendant of Noah, will be born the child of the miracle: Nimrod, the powerful, the spiritual father of warlords and assassins of the earth, a figure half man half god who will soon be manifested all over again in the person of the antichrist, of whom it is written that he will be animated by the spirit of the devil himself. The son of the Queen of Heaven is a murderer. Think of the millions of sincere Christians whom so-called Christians put to death during the persecutions and religious wars because they refused to pledge allegiance to the Queen of Heaven and her political system. Think also of Ismael, son of the Egyptian servant Hagar who represents the cult of Isis, and who became the visceral enemy of Isaac and his descendants. Semiramis therefore embodies this mother goddess, the Queen of Heaven who is claimed to be a virgin and who has been venerated since ancient times by the peoples whom Moses and Joshua had to destroy because they had abominable morals. She is the Astarte who regularly caused the Hebrews to fall into a veneration which brought them defeat against their enemies, sickness and death. She is known all over the world and under various names, which are all facets of this rebellious spirit whose origin goes back to the foundations of the world: Ishtar, Cybele, Demeter, Venus, Aphrodite, Diana and many others. It has been said that for a nation to prosper, it will have to pledge allegiance to the Queen of Heaven. Today we say the same thing with regard to the Virgin Mary and the analogy is not accidental. Remember what the devil said to Jesus in the wilderness: “All the nations of the world have given themselves to me and I will give you your share if bowing before me, you worship me”. In reality, this worship brings the curse on the countries that have adopted it: poverty, lack of education, witchcraft and moral prejudice against women and the disabled, slavery and child sacrifices. Have you wondered why some Catholic priests commit vile child abuse? These men are not always aware of it, but ritual defilement is an integral part of the worship of the Queen of Heaven. Ritual prostitution was practiced in Greek temples. The Canaanites had morals that would make members of the LGBT community blush. Anaisa Pye, Mami Wata, Pachamama – you name it – the information that reaches us is filtered, but what is happening in the reality of our times is unimaginable. Rich and very influential people use places like Haïti where voodoo is practiced, to sell their souls to the devil in exchange for some benefits, and they do it through horrific child sacrifices. The true mother of Jesus must be heartbroken to see her son still nailed to that cross in many Christian churches, and how her own identity has been usurped to lead countless poor-spirited people in a direction diametrically opposed to that of their salvation. The one who hides behind the innocent face of Myriam is none other than the formidable Lilith, the Ishtar of the Babylonians or the Astarte of the Canaanites, and it is in fact the devil or Lucifer.

 

The Virgin offers her pure and suffering face. It's actually another facade behind which we find Cybele, the mother of the gods. The Bible, in the Book of Revelation, describes this character in its entirety as the mother of idolaters and all the detestable things of the earth. In Revelation 2, she is also the spirit of Jezebel tolerated in the church of Thyatira. Jesus does not hide that those who give themselves up to her worship will suffer greater pain and will perish with their children. And if they do not repent, they will disappear in the lake of fire which is reserved for the one they have taken as a guide in place of Christ. Because you see, if Christ is promised to us as the bridegroom of the new humanity, the Queen of Heaven is only a sinister trickster. She is none other than the fallen bride offered to us by Satan. Moreover, if you look at this representation – this one is located in the Notre Dame de la Médaille Miraculeuse chapel in Paris, but there are thousands of representations of this type throughout the world – you will understand, by observing the relationship that exists between the tiny Christ still attached to the cross and therefore rendered powerless, and this magnified Queen of Heaven who dominates and fills all heavens, what is the nature of the victory claimed by Catholicism.

“To whom can you compare God? What image can you find to resemble him? Can he be compared to an idol formed in a mold, overlaid with gold, and decorated with silver chains? Or if people are too poor for that, they might at least choose wood that won’t decay and a skilled craftsman to carve an image that won’t fall down! Haven’t you heard? Don’t you understand? Are you deaf to the words of God— the words he gave before the world began? Are you so ignorant? God sits above the circle of the earth. The people below seem like grasshoppers to him ! He spreads out the heavens like a curtain and makes his tent from them”. Isaiah 40: 18-22

A dreadful aspect of the Catholic ceremony, and one that is misunderstood by Catholics themselves, is the sacrifice of Jesus, which the priest offers all over again during Mass, to God, but actually to the Mother of the gods: the Queen of Heaven. There would also be a whole chapter to write on the Eucharist and how the meaning of our communion with Christ was diverted towards the transubstantiation of ancient Egypt. This misappropriation of religions, because none is unscathed, is a major social problem which affects many people, sincere people who moreover love their children and their neighbors. How can they know that the veneration of the Virgin Mary will lead them surreptitiously into the veneration of Satan? Admittedly, they see their children whom they have dedicated to the Virgin through a rite, become psychiatric patients. But how are they going to make the connection if no one tells them this cause and effect relationship? We cannot continue to turn a blind eye to occult practices which are happening within the Christian religion itself. The Catholic Church cannot go back. Politicians will not intervene because the whole political arena is steeped in this corruption and the remedy they would provide would be worse than the disease and affect all Christians. Salvation is therefore an individual initiative.

“‘The Lord said to my Lord: “Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.”’ “Therefore let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Messiah.” When the people heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the other apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?” Peter replied, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off—for all whom the Lord our God will call.” With many other words he warned them; and he pleaded with them, “Save yourselves from this corrupt generation.” Those who accepted his message were baptized, and about three thousand were added to their number that day”. Acts 2: 34-41

 

Judgment is coming upon the world, for our deliverance.

Jesus will be born in very precarious conditions and on a date that remains unidentified to this day, and it is not an accident, as the time of his return will also remain unknown to us until we are confronted with it. Because Jesus is a liberating king and what surrounds him is part of a strategic plan that cannot be revealed. Jesus did not know the date of his return as long as he was on earth, neither did the angels, but the Father alone. His plan takes no account of the speculations of men, so that the return of Jesus, according to his own words, surprises us as he will surprise his enemies by literally pinning them to the ground. But if you have paid attention to what is mentioned a little above, you now know in relation to what events the return of Christ will take place. The glory of his return as ruler of the world will be without comparison with the discretion of his birth, and his reign will greatly contrast with his humble ministry as a sower of truth.

“He judges the great people of the world and brings them all to nothing. They hardly get started, barely taking root, when he blows on them and they wither. The wind carries them off like chaff.” Isaiah 40: 23-24

Jesus has the power, and he will change everything with the breath of his mouth. It is still required for man to put the height of his revolt by placing at his head the new Nimrod, the one called the Antichrist, the false christ who draws his power from the prince of the abyss – Abaddon or Apollyon (Apocalypse 9:11), for mankind must reap the fruits of its rebellion. Then shall the end come. If God allows and is patient, it is not out of weakness or wickedness, and it is even less to give himself time to change his mind and admit that ultimately, sin can have its charms, as some seem wait for it. “The grass withers and the flowers fade, but the word of our God stands forever” we are reminded in Isaiah 40:8. Man will disappear long before God changes his mind, because he won't. The Bible is the immutable word of God, and it is besides the next objective of the forces of the evil, to discredit it and to try to make it disappear. Already, no one reads the Bible anymore because no one understands it anymore, so much are we prey to the spirit of the world, impregnated with the false conceptions that circulate in our society and even in religion. But if God is patient, it is on the contrary to give us the opportunity to become aware of the issues, to repent of our rebellion acquired over generations and to change sides, while it's time, so that we may we be united with our true Creator, the one who loves us so much that he gave his life for us. For God loves us like a father, and the place he has prepared for the rebellious angels, for Satan and for their worshipers – and indeed for the whole cohort of spirits who have sown only lies and misfortune in the lives of men, of which this spirit who calls herself the "mother of god" belongs, who only usurped the identity of the mother of Jesus in order to divert us from the glory of Jesus and the power that he wishes to communicate to us, is really not a place where he will enjoy seeing his children disappear, even the most disobedient.

“Who is able to advise the Spirit of the Lord? Who knows enough to give him advice or teach him? Has the Lord ever needed anyone’s advice? Does he need instruction about what is good? Did someone teach him what is right or show him the path of justice? No, for all the nations of the world are but a drop in the bucket. They are nothing more than dust on the scales. He picks up the whole earth as though it were a grain of sand. All the wood in Lebanon’s forests and all Lebanon’s animals would not be enough to make a burnt offering worthy of our God. The nations of the world are worth nothing to him. In his eyes they count for less than nothing— mere emptiness and froth.” Isaiah 40: 13-17

Today, everyone wonders if the geopolitical world is still credible. Our leaders are engaging in a rat race that only shows their weakness and their corruption, while mercenaries make demonstrations of force by brandishing the nukes they got hold of. We probably have the leaders we deserve. Our culture has crumbled and no longer protects the weak and the upright. Every day, laws are passed aimed at dispossessing poor people, or silencing people who still defend some values, when it is not to encourage the killing ofchildren. A striking fact of our time is the violence against children. Satanism has infiltrated everywhere and is now targeting them. Ambiguous personalities want us to believe that man made himself and that he is master of everything, even the free choice of his sexual identity, a human tragedy favored by this artificial environment of cities, in which too many children must grow up subject to the image, perhaps that “image of the beast which talks” mentioned in the book of Revelation. We have no trouble understanding that television and small screens fascinate us to the point of making our conditioning, and especially that of our children, inevitable. The new heroes promote these deviations and hammer home the fact that human life belongs to us, while others argue that before birth and even after, it has no value and that we can do with it as we see fit. Of course, all life is sacred and we are not going to harbor hatred against those who have these practices that we disapprove of, since Jesus died to reconcile us to the Father first, and to all our brothers. Just as Jesus gave up his life and sacrificed himself, we will overcome evil by doing good and loving. But we must not hide our face on what will happen. God will have to show himself dreadful towards those who persist in their revolt and who despise his gift and his forgiveness.

So, for as long as there remains a breath of life in them, let's hope for good things and a change in their hearts. In reality, these deviations are the resurgence of the spirits of paganism, eager for the blood of children. These are the abominable things that the Canaanites practiced before Joshua put them to the sword. Because all this weakens us considerably. Ideologies have infiltrated our educational system and overturned our sense of values. Nations that have no feelings are now on the verge of taking over our nations through our moral decay. The future that is taking shape before us and our children would really have something to frighten us, but for that we still need to open our eyes. Soon our sacrosanct concerns about renewable energies and those linked to global warming and its cohort of consequences, could seem very ridiculous to us. The enemy is the moral decay of our nations, in regard to which the word "Christian" is already but a pale memory tainted by child abuse and crimes against humanity in the name of God. Our culture thinks it got rid of it, however the world is simply dispersed in the fascination of a multitude of false gods, each more cruel than the other. We are in a very bad position and those who imagine themselves reaching a form of freedom by rejecting values and structures will hardly have time to realize their mistake before being engulfed in the debacle of the world. Because our world has indeed come to an end, since on the scale of our history, it is midnight minus one.

“The Lord is like a father to his children, tender and compassionate to those who fear him. For he knows how weak we are; he remembers we are only dust. Our days on earth are like grass; like wildflowers, we bloom and die. The wind blows, and we are gone— as though we had never been here. But the love of the Lord remains forever with those who fear him. His salvation extends to the children’s children of those who are faithful to his covenant, of those who obey his commandments!"   Psalm 103

And people who don't have this hope say they want a radical change in society. Some are ready to join in a movement aimed at undermining and levelling out traditionally recognized values, which they believe will help rebuild a fairer and more equitable world. But we have known historically that revolutions, even though they were carried by beautiful utopias, got bogged down in anarchy and chaos so that they were immediately placed under the ruthless control of totalitarian regimes. If you simply strip away what has to do with God and religion, you get an egotistical society in which everyone becomes solitary and not solidary, and estranged from the common good and from others.

The Bible announces times like these. Of course, it tells us, and it is fortunate, the renewal of the face of the Earth in connection with a change of moral government, followed with an era of peace and prosperity like the earth has not known before. But prior to that, the world will experience unprecedented distress for a very short period of history. For, unfortunately, man must go to the end of this revolt against God in which the forces of chaos drag him. Many good people imagine that the world is moving towards the best and that it will achieve a certain peace through universal wisdom drawn from different cultures and religions. Catholics believe that by elevating the notion of fraternity, they will reach a more unified world. This is misunderstanding the true nature of the global conflict. This conflict not only pits nations against each other, or interests and peoples, but pits a spiritual government – a cosmos – against God. Paul says in Ephesians 6 that “we do not have to fight against beings of flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the authorities, against the powers of this world of darkness, and against the spirits of evil in the heavenly world.” Daniel, Isaiah, Jesus, and others, said that when men imagine that themselves will be able to rebuild a world that will be after their views and pacified – and this includes the efforts of political, religious, economic, identitarian and social movements – then a sudden ruin will surprise them. The forces of chaos, money and false religion, which they have used in their businesses, will turn against them and destroy them. This will be followed by atrocious times when man will be placed under the iron rod of demonic and cruel rulers in whose eyes human life is worthless.

Spiritual famine will then be extreme, and those who have not taken the trouble to root themselves deeply in the truth and who do not know Christ on a personal level, will be carried away by the false truths which, right now, sweep over the world and even over the church. In Revelation 3:10, Jesus said, “Since you have kept my command to endure patiently, I will also keep you from the hour of trial that is going to come on the whole world to test the inhabitants of the earth.” Under the influence of collective hysteria, people will be enemies of truth and good people. Only comfort: we know that this time will be shortened, out of respect for those who love God. For, arising from the very cyclone of madness that will take hold of the world, Christ will suddenly appear in the open, with his angels and his elected representatives. He will return as he ascended to heaven on the Day of Ascension, but this time in the sight of all, and in an immeasurable glory. After having, supernaturally, put an end to the war and put a semblance of order on earth, he will establish a new era in which all those who have chosen it beforehand will participate. A wonderful era that will reveal the greatness of men created in the image of God, and which, according to the description that the Bible gives us, will soon make us forget all the miseries to which we have been subjected during the present life.

But then, where is our salvation, you may ask? What can we do on a personal level so as not to be carried away, and to end where we did not want to go? If, like me, you have a Christian background but you feel within yourself that you do not have this relationship with Christ that will allow you to go through this decay of the world and of its values while remaining firmly attached to God, the answer is simple: Believe in the Gospel. But let us give up all those false gospels that have spread over the centuries – and the more modern as well – and return to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The Bible states that:

“Jesus is ‘the stone you builders rejected, which has become the cornerstone.’ Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved.”Acts 4: 11-12.

I must say that my forty-five years of not always glorious walk with God will have taught me one thing: Men are constantly taking detours in seeking an easier path to God, a path or a method that will save them from having to confront alone the person of the risen Christ. This is why the various Christian religions still have a certain success. A man who had been a learned theologian and zealous for God once said:

”But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith. I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead”. Philippians 3: 7-11.

“It is a sure word and entirely worthy of being received, that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the typical example”. 1 Letter from Paul to Timothy 1:15.

“Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, forbearance and patience, not realizing that God’s kindness is intended to lead you to repentance? But because of your stubbornness and your unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God’s wrath, when his righteous judgment will be revealed. God “will repay each person according to what they have done”. Romans 2: 4-6.

The Gospel of Jesus Christ is precisely the end of religion and the renewal of the personal relationship with God through Jesus. Jesus tells us that unless we are born again—unless we are born of the spirit—of the Spirit of God—we will have no part with him. I sometimes hear in one ear the mass that my mother listens to on television every day. This dismays me. The priest says things that are right and in accordance with the Gospel, but he says them in a context that is the negation of the truths announced. My dear old mama has been rocked by these tunes since her early childhood, and hearing them is enough for her. She finds the mass to be magnificent and she turns to the Virgin Mary to rely on her benevolence towards her and towards her family. She does not understand that by adhering to these principles and practices, she remains a prisoner of a religion subservient to the world and in reality opposed to Jesus, and which will soon be judged with the world. It is not enough to immerse a dead body in an oil of charismatic renewal to bring it back to life. There's no point in being “activated” by receiving the “Bethel anointing” within yourself, unless you just want to get weird and be speedier than before. The world takes amphetamines, but Jesus gives us his peace, that which comes from his permanent presence in our heart. Yes, I protest against these practices which harm Christians and the image of Christianity. The true Spirit of Pentecost does not make people happy and playful, rolling mad, or hilarious or lalomaniac. The joy of the Holy Spirit comes to us when we see the fruits of the Spirit multiplying. But in reality, God causes us to die to this world, to die to our religion, to die to ourselves, in order to then raise us up in a perspective and with a strength that come only from him, having thus become wise unto salvation.

When Pilate was confronted with Jesus for an interrogation which caused him a real case of conscience, he was in great fear. At one point he said to him :

“So you are king? Jesus answered: You say it, I am king. I was born and came into the world to bear witness to the truth. Whoever is of the truth listens to my voice.” John 18:37.

At that very moment, Pilate was convinced, just like his wife had been earlier, and he would have had a perhaps once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to pass from one kingdom to another. But we have a small idea of what this position would have cost him and we know that out of cowardice, he contented himself with washing his hands of the blood of this innocent man-God.

Maybe this was wise for a time. Maybe my motivations and my way of expressing things needed to evolve, be refined and become stronger. But I had come to an impasse. Religiosity is a mental, directed and calculated approach to the things of God. And to tell the truth, it is the spirit of the Pharisees. Jesus reproached them that by dint of evaluating and judging others, they had become petty and judgemental. In fact, they were dead, Jesus tells us, like tombs decorated on the outside but full of bones on the inside. Adhering to a legalistic faith causes us to die spiritually. Now the Bible said, “Guard your heart with all vigilance, for from it are the sources of life.” Proverbs 4:23. We are intrinsically spiritual beings walking in a body, a body which it is true is torn and sometimes even tormented by other breaths coming from a world which has chosen independence and rebellion. Our talents and our natural gifts are thus claimed by this culture which is in full uprising against God and which will not recover from its drift. We owe it to ourselves, not to repress our talents, but to give them another boost by stretching out our sails to the wind of the Spirit, which is the breath of the written and revealed word of God.

For those who are pure, everything is pure, but for defiled and unbelieving men, nothing is pure. Their mind and conscience are defiled. Certainly, they claim to know God, but they deny him by their acts.   Titus 1:15-16

Everything is pure for the pure. Our imagination is a gift from God and God is the source of this life and our creativity. God is also Love, and the Pharisees had forgotten this by dint of hearing the teaching of Moses and learning only to conceal their humanity, which Jesus had to remind them of. The passage quoted above makes us understand that God desires to occupy our whole heart in order to be this life which flows from our deepest being towards the world, nourishing us along the way. The secret of creativity after God is there, in this place that we yield to Love.

Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the flesh. Romans 13: 14.

However, it is clear that the normal religious life is only words and pretences. For where are the things promised by God and where are the fruits of our faith? Our faith as Christians has become so deep… that it remains invisible. It no longer flows towards the world. Or else it expresses itself in ways that do not involve God. The New Age has hastened to appropriate certain principles of God by taking away the treasures of the Life of God in which the Church has not taken sufficient interest. These resources allow some people to be very influential and wealthy, but their success will get them nowhere because the gifts that these people exercise for their personal development, well-being and to serve their interests have been withdrawn from their source and of their purpose. I sometimes hear, and have thought, that a person who claims his faith in Christ should never be sick. Living in good health for a long time in a sick world is a challenge, because our earthly vehicle remains subject to the law of sin and death. But by wrestling with sin and its consequences, by allowing the light of Christ to shine in the darkness of this world through our witness and our creativity, we build for ourselves a new home in spirit that will not be affected by the end of all things. In 2 Corinthians 4, the Apostle Paul gives a very complete description of this process of transfer from one life to another. He is saying in summary that if we allow the spirit of Christ to manifest in our mortal flesh, then he who raised up the Lord Jesus will also raise us up with Jesus, and bring us into his presence. The great difference between the New Age approach and the Christian approach is that the latter recognizes the original rebellion of man and relies on God after having integrated him as a person into the process of rehabilitation represented by the Gospel. Madness for the world but wisdom of God for the salvation of men, the cross is the place of submission where all our paths separate.

 

If there's one thing we need to share with Jesus, it's authenticity. Fifteen years ago, I embarked on a rather special journey. I left on my own, pushed by an imperious wind of authenticity. Alone with a bag that has become too heavy to carry, but certainly not spiritually alone. Some of you know: Australia is a country with which I have strong ties. I needed to reconnect with a heritage, reluctantly abandoned at the time of my first steps as a Christian, and for wrong reasons such as mentioned above. Australia: the Southern Land of explorers. Australia: the Land of the Dream for its first inhabitants. They had to be able to dream about their future to survive in this largely desert country, just like the first settlers elsewhere, who had to clear pastures and build the structures that now make this continent so attractive to visitors.

We all have a promised land, a spiritual heritage to claim. Salvation in Jesus is not earned. It is so overpriced that God gave it to us for free. But our heritage, we must conquer. I don't think I have a physical legacy there, but who knows. Yet I have received a priceless legacy from all the wonderful Australians I have had the good fortune to meet in my short life of travel. One of them is Pastor Neville Johnson. Oh I haven't met the man in person, but I have been fortunate enough to be in contact with his teachings for many years. At first, I admit I thought he was making up stories. But the older I get, the more my own experiences, which nevertheless remain insignificant, lead me to believe that everything he says he has experienced is true. Can we see the invisible? What is the secret of those who heal others and do good by having success in their prayers? They use their imagination to love better. Jesus shares with us his secret :

 

“As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it and said, “If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes. The days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against you and encircle you and hem you in on every side. They will dash you to the ground, you and the children within your walls. They will not leave one stone on another, because you did not recognize the time of God’s coming to you.” Luke 19: 41-44.

…or else, it was abused by others who grabbed it but used it disconnected from its source for their own purposes :

“Jesus said: If you believe in me you “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’” Matthew 7: 21-23.

… But there is still a baby in the bathwater, and so we shouldn't throw everything down the drain !

“Hear me, my people, and I will warn you— if you would only listen to me, Israel! You shall have no foreign god among you; you shall not worship any god other than me. I am the Lord your God, who brought you up out of Egypt. Open wide your mouth and I will fill it. “But my people would not listen to me; Israel would not submit to me. So I gave them over to their stubborn hearts to follow their own devices. “If my people would only listen to me, if Israel would only follow my ways, how quickly I would subdue their enemies and turn my hand against their foes! Those who hate the Lord would cringe before him, and their punishment would last forever. But you would be fed with the finest of wheat; with honey from the rock I would satisfy you.” Psalm 81: 8-16.

 

 

The world will not be able to save itself. But those who will have allowed Jesus to save them, will restore life to a world in ruins.

As surprising as it may seem, we discover throughout the Bible that from the moment our ancestors decided to rely on the wisdom of the serpent, God became personæ non grata in the lives of men – men moreover very religious! Through the story of the antediluvian world reshaped by the angels, up to the tower of Babel, the story of Noah and the flood, Nimrod, Abraham escaped from Babylon, then the story of the Israelites whom God redeemed from Egypt and who nevertheless will want to have a king like the other nations, “so that God no longer reigns over them”. Then, the advent of religions, even and above all ecumenical with men at their head, and now this “New apostolic reformation”, which promotes an immediate kingdom of God and vector of a New Age syncretism. And in the political world, the short-lived reign of liars that will allow the world government of the Antichrist to come as the solution, with his unique religion. While in the scientific world, we turned away a long time ago from the concept of an intelligent creation to adhere to the fable of evolutionism, thus excusing the substitution of moral values, of an artificial intelligence, and the “ "tinkering" of man through the means offered by transhumanism and the complete overhaul of the notion of identity and gender – all of these things demonstrate what the Bible has always affirmed, namely: that the enterprises of men will carry them on to the end in wanting to uplift the fallen world by their own efforts. Their success, very apparent, they owe in reality to the assistance of the god of this world : the “serpent”. All of this—this synergy between man's rebellion and the support of the fallen spirit world—has but one purpose: The world will not yield to the coming reign of Christ, and man must simply continue to exist religiously, without having his God living within him. As much to tell you, this world is not going for the better, but things will go from bad to worse, until the rebellion of man has reached its peak. Only then can the beautiful work of creation that was interrupted many millennia ago, be able to pick up where things left off. The world in ruins will be saved by Jesus, back on earth with those who, during their lifetime, will have made the choice to join the divine plan.

 

 

What does it mean to be a Christian, today?

 

Jesus Comforts His Disciples, in John 14

“Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going.”

Jesus the Way to the Father

Thomas said to him, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?” Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you really know me, you will know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.” Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.” Jesus answered: “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you I do not speak on my own authority. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work. Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the works themselves. Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.

Jesus Promises the Holy Spirit

“If you love me, keep my commands. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever— the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you. Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me. The one who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love them and show myself to them. ” Then Judas (not Judas Iscariot) said, “But, Lord, why do you intend to show yourself to us and not to the world? ” Jesus replied, “Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them. Anyone who does not love me will not obey my teaching. These words you hear are not my own; they belong to the Father who sent me. “All this I have spoken while still with you. But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.”

 

I had then dared to say – we were talking about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – that this conflict is settled. The Bible was clear about this: Israel had the favour of God, and though they should suffer, they would rise again from all the attacks and persecutions to which they have always been subjected. And if the attitudes of Israelis towards their neighbours – who admittedly are mostly poor people and struggling with their children to survive – seemed to us bewildering and uncompassionate, these brutal reactions were in many cases justified by the murderous intentions that agitators mingled with these populations harbour against Israel. This friend got angry and told me she couldn't believe it. At that moment, I knew that for her, I was, or we were, we Messianic Christians, from those violent fundamentalists, worthy successors of the Joshuas and the Moseses who during their progress towards their "promised land" did not hesitate to despoil the inhabitants of their lands by slaughtering women and children – the shocking argument of those who reject the God of the Old Testament. … Her sudden annoyance worried me. I understood that by having supported a party incautiously for her sensitivity as a philanthropist, I had lost the opportunity to win to another vision of things, this friend issued from a line of anticlerical and largely atheist philosophers, in reality light years ahead from my too Manichean understanding of things. But above all, I was not unaware of the existence of a formidable curse. God spoke it long ago when He promised Abraham, the Gentile inheritance. He told him that as he and his heirs after him would walk with him in faith in his promises, he would support them in this process. Through an irresistible spiritual action, consisting of blessing those who would bless him and cursing those who would curse him, God was going to allow Abraham and his descendants to regain a world once carried away by the ancient serpent, which is the devil. The issue of our discussion about Israel had puzzled me. Why did things have to go so sour, or what more universal issues were concealed behind this Arab-Israeli conflict? So, when a few months later, I learned that this friend was passing away from a mysterious illness, I felt great regret because of the unexpected turn our understanding had taken. In 1 Corinthians 13, Paul says, “When I have the gift of prophecy, the knowledge of all mysteries, and all knowledge, even when I have all faith to move mountains, if I have not love, I am nothing”. I must admit that by having defended a theoretical position without caring about the sensitivity of this friend, a truly extraordinary person and for whom Christ had given his life, I had in a certain way denied the one who, 'if the Truth, is none the less the Father of all beings and the source of love… Now hospitalized far away, I wrote to her again that she did not have to die, because another has died for all of us. Her passing away was a great loss for her husband and all her friends.

What scares me sometimes is the power we have, said the one I was getting to know – a beautiful person who, because she has an exacerbated spiritual sensitivity, told me that she had had some experiences that seemed dreadful to her, especially in mediumship. Don't get too close to me, I replied, letting my puzzled gaze wander. Those who speak of the things of God carry a heavy responsibility. We must warn, but above all we must bear. “Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who cling to the principle will eat the fruits thereof,” reads Proverbs 17:21. A bad prognosis, an unfavourable prediction, are as many curses. A harsh or judgemental word leaves indelible scares. A promise made lightly and not fulfilled makes the heart sick. I missed great opportunities to shut up and listen with a more respectful ear, and later regretted it bitterly. “Do not judge so that you will not be judged, said Jesus, for you will be measured with the measure you have used”. And perhaps, that was the lesson finally learned by those who walked around with stones hidden in the folds of their clothing. “They left all sheepish, starting with the oldest. I don't condemn you either, Jesus said to her. Go, and sin no more”. “Father, forgive them, for they do not understand what they are doing”; “If my kingdom were of this world, my angels would have fought for me”, he said in other circumstances. “I have not lost any of those you have given me”, these were Jesus' last thoughts in the Garden of Gethsemane, before his arrest.

 

An encounter that changes everything.

A proverb from the Bible states that a soft word can break bones. Like the ice that imprisons the streams, melts with the first breath of spring to let the running water sing the song of the springs, there comes a day when our unrelenting hearts are disconcerted by a child's look, by a regret, the sudden disappearance of a loved one, the unspeakable breath of the Spirit. Blinded and distraught, we are then led by the hand towards the tenderness of things revealed. Precisely : “living water". She had told me that these words were important to her. So to her question about the universality of God across religions, I resisted the temptation to answer head-on. I learned that in these situations, we must allow God to help us in our weakness by proving himself, and not defend him as those whose faith is weak do. I could have told her that Jesus is on a different level of being than all those gods and prophets of the world of religions, or I could have quoted Acts 4:12: “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved.” This repartee would have gotten me out of trouble on a doctrinal level, but it would have dealt a fatal blow to our conversation and to the trust she showed me in her confidences. It needed a more factual approach, and above all a more personal one, an approach inspired by that of Jesus. Because in fact, are Christians, who are supposed to be an extension of Christ on earth, so different from other people? Does the wind of the Spirit carry me towards words full of grace? Am I myself so fulfilled in the love of my neighbour that I am the evidence itself? Are the miracles of God the area in which I move daily? Nothing is less sure… The commitment remains calculated, measured, mediocre and granted in exchange for a certain peace of mind. The truth is that like many men who were bullied in their youth, I remain imprisoned by shyness. This timidity is not of God and it is not in love. I may tell you one day how I lost my freedom for refusing to conquer it, but let's close this parenthesis.

I then remembered my own encounter with Christ, and I told the one I already perceived as a friend, how, while reading the Gospels one day when I was going through a real storm, Jesus had presented himself in my room, and how his hands had rested on my shoulders to make me understand that he and I were now united for life. In the joys as in the trials that I would go through, it would be enough for me to seek his presence by immersing myself in his words. I went on telling her how shortly after that, God miraculously healed me in a meeting I attended. Jesus had then given the preacher a precise word concerning me, and when he had told it, I had immediately recognized myself, while an invisible and warm hand rested on my wound. My voice was choked with emotion as I told her these things, so many years after the fact. Discovering that God knew me intimately was going to give a new turn to my life. So it's been a long time since you had this experience with God? I was twenty-three. I understand now why you know so much… I got distracted though. It wasn't until about fifteen years ago following my divorce that I realized that I had lived too many years walking beside my shoes, as they say. I then wanted to revive some of the dreams that had been short-circuited when I had allowed circumstances to stop me in my tracks. I had been told that to fulfil God's will I would have to give up my longings and that if one thing felt like a pain to me, it was pretty sure that that's what God was going to ask of me. This famous notion of self-sacrifice? Yes, a notion that is instilled in us by society, for example to justify military service, but also in the countless stories of lives consecrated to God that are transmitted by religion. So I got married and went back to my parents' business in a logic of renunciation. Paulo Coelho wrote in “The Alchemist”: “At some point in our existence, we lose control of our life, which is then governed by destiny. This is where the greatest imposture in the world lies.” I was actually living a double life, because my heart wasn't in what I was doing. I tried in every way to find peace, but I couldn't. Having come to the end of myself, I granted myself the right to take up photography again, and for a time, I felt revived. But I knew deep down that I was still missing another dimension, something very important. And then, I took a slap reading the parable of the talents, in Matthew 25. I knew very well that God had invested something in me because he had told me so, and I understood that I was this man who , faced with the dispossession of his life, had quite simply decided to bury his talent while waiting for better fortune. Since then, I have gone up a step in my commitment by entrusting this talent to the bankers so that it brings in at least an interest ! I'm trying to make up for lost time by getting up to speed with this knowledge and sharing the things that I think I've understood, and God encourages me to do so with all these amazing resources that can now be easily accessed through the Internet. It is nevertheless necessary to make a severe sorting, but I feel guided. I also try to be more open to requests. Good things seem to come out from my mistakes, and I actually have a book to finish. But time is getting short.

 

The Living Water, or the new nature of the world.

Unbelievable! …And these are once again, only words, she told me. I met a photographer, it was years ago and he died. He had a great sensitivity, and it was he who suggested that I take an interest in these words: “Living Water”. Truly? This photographer must have been some kind of angel on your way! I believe it, because he brought me a lot. Do you know where this expression “Living Water” comes from? No, and I didn't know it was found elsewhere? Well, it comes from the Bible, in John 4. One day, Jesus arrives by the road at the gates of a town of Samaria called Suchar. Samaria and its region are not considered by the Jews from Jerusalem, but it is perhaps precisely what interests Jesus: the opportunity to stop among more relaxed, more open people. His disciples leave him by the well and go shopping. Jesus is waiting, and he is thirsty. Suchar is not our refreshing cocoa drink, however the town's name means 'strong and intoxicating drink'. At the time, everyone must have a means to be able to draw their water, and Jesus did not. Then this woman arrives with everything she needs and Jesus asks her to drink. But the woman is not the “I submit to you my master, here is your water, drink my lord” kind of person you see in old Hollywood peplums. No ! I barely embroider : she looks at him incredulously, hands on her hips, then she says to him : How is it that you, who are an apparently respectable Jew, are asking for a drink from me who am a woman and moreover a Samaritan? Don't you know you're supposed to despise a person like me? Or is it only thirst that drives you to talk to me? She reminds me of those North African women, overflowing with a mischievous and sometimes provocative banter. Or was she in reality a daughter of Naphtali, shrewd, driven by fine words, naturally interested in the presence of this stranger and thinking of the service she could render him? The nuance does not always appear at first glance.

In any case, Jesus answers her : “If you knew the gift of God and who it is who is saying to you: Give me a drink! you yourself would have asked him for a drink, and he would have given you living water”. Thereupon engages a real conversation between two people that these improbable circumstances were able to bring together. God has a way of bringing together people who have something to bring to each other at a favourable time. And the Messiah is precisely there to give us a new breath, a new impetus. We see it so many occasions throughout the Gospels. We believe that life has come to a standstill, but for God, a page has simply been turned and it is time to tackle the next one. Did you lose your job? Here's what we're going to do together. Your man left you alone with the kids? I will teach you to find your pleasure and your safety in me. Have you lost interest in life? Give me what's left of it and I'll do something with it. Did this dreadful illness stop you dead in your tracks? I want it : be healed ! Your daughter is dead? I'm going to wake her up. Are you in the bonds of death? Come on Lazarus, get out ! Do you suddenly feel orphaned following a loss? So here is your mother, and here is your son !

It's true: these are just words. But even if these words do not have the persuasive power of the signs and wonders that accompany those who wholeheartedly believe in the presence of Christ in their lives, simple words can be carried by the breath of life. Angels are messengers who bring a word to men from God. An angel, and the Spirit who now accompanies us, can whisper to our ear without any particular demonstration. The fact that we were in each other's presence, talking about these deep things, when that very morning we barely knew each other, was, as she had pointed out earlier, from the realm of the marvellous. There are events that are imperative and like children, we must be careful not to ignore them. We also see in Jesus a man so devoid of prejudice in his open and respectful relationships with women. Jesus is the anti-Taliban par excellence. He loves without calculation, without limit and without distinction, whether the person is beautiful or rejected by society, affected by leprosy or another disability. He sees, beyond appearances, what the person is in the project of the One who made it. At one point, Jesus still sends the water-drawer to fetch her husband because he would not want them to appropriate this privileged relationship. And there, she is very embarrassed. “I don't have a husband,” she tells him. Jesus, who sees in her as in an open book, says to her: “You were right to say: I have no husband. For you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband”. Shocked by this impromptu revelation which touches on an area which she cannot open up to anyone, the woman quickly takes stock of the situation. Let's see: this stranger just came up, I didn't see any of my friends on the way here, and I don't see a copy of People's Magazine lying around by the well either, and it's never about me anyway. … But some say that a great prophet, who could be Israel's Messiah, is traveling in the region. Could he be standing there in front of me? It's funny, I didn't imagine him like that at all. The man is nice, and rather sympathetic for a clerk ! And she goes to tell everyone, who she thinks she might have met near the well.

But before letting her go, Jesus still answers some of her questions.

“Sir, ” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock? ” Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water. ” John 4.

– A very touching statement. The word translated into English as “living”, is the Greek word Zao. It is used for “live, breathe, be among the living, live a real life, have the real life, the one that is worthy of the name”. Or for “water of life”, or “to have a vital power in oneself”. Metaphorically : “to be in full vigour, to be fresh, strong, efficient”. We find it in : Man shall not “live” (zao) on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God. Or when Simon Peter replied: You are the Christ, the Son of the “living” God (zao). Further in the Gospel of John, in chapter 7, we are given an explanation on the nature of this living water :

“On the last and greatest day of the festival, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.” By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. Up to that time the Spirit had not been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified”.

 

What should we think of the religions?

This person also takes advantage of the conversation to get an educated opinion on a matter that concerns many Samaritans.

“Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshipped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”

“Woman, ” Jesus replied, “believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshippers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshippers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshippers must worship in the Spirit and in truth. ” The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us. ” Then Jesus declared, “I, the one speaking to you—I am he. ”

Jesus answers the very legitimate question which consists in knowing which confession it is the wisest to choose, by telling her that salvation has indeed been brought to the world by the Jews. There is no doubt about it since he himself is this salvation. He admits that the Judaic religion was necessary because it helped to make known to men the will of God. But he announces that a new order of things has come. He tells her that from now on, God has nothing to do with religions, no matter what name you give them. Because what interests him are men who share his very heart and who do so in spirit and in truth. He also tells her, that with him, that time has now arrived ! An illustration of this new reality is the event called “the transfiguration” in Matthew 17 and Mark 9, of which I mentioned an excerpt at the beginning of this page. …

“After six days Jesus took Peter, James and John with him and led them up a high mountain, where they were all alone. There he was transfigured before them. His clothes became dazzling white, whiter than anyone in the world could bleach them. And there appeared before them Elijah and Moses, who were talking with Jesus. Peter said to Jesus, “Rabbi, it is good for us to be here. Let us put up three shelters—one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah. ” (He did not know what to say, they were so frightened.) Then a cloud appeared and covered them, and a voice came from the cloud: “This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him! ” Suddenly, when they looked around, they no longer saw anyone with them except Jesus”.

This passage is very interesting, and I'm not sure I understand everything. But what is obvious is that God, the Father, wants to draw our attention on Jesus alone. Peter is a little confused by the event he has just witnessed, and he would be ready to build a temple to Elijah and another to Moses. Moses represents the era of religious law, Elijah, that of the prophets. Jesus puts them both in retirement because he establishes the reign of the Messiah, a reign which signifies the coming of the Son, a son prefigured by the law and announced by the prophets. Jesus will say that he came to fulfil the law and the prophets. What he means by this is that he himself is the fulfilment of all that had been announced or prefigured before his coming.

However, on closer scrutiny, religions all have one thing in common: it is the pure and simple eviction of the experience of the messiah or the Son, from the daily life. And this is understandable since religion served to fill the gap during the period of expectation of the son, who for millions of men remained nailed to a cross. What is the value of a crucifix ? The risen Christ is alive, to share our life, to teach, to walk among men – this is the meaning of the name Emmanuel. The Son signifies the end of things prefigured by religion and the advent of reality : we are henceforth united with God. Religion is therefore obsolete, useless, insofar as men will accept the new covenant that God offers us through the son.

“This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel after that time, ” declares the Lord. “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. No longer will they teach their neighbour, or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord, ’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, ” declares the Lord. “For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more. ”

In Jeremiah 31, God says in summary that he is going to make a new covenant with his people : he will write his law, no longer on slabs of stones, but on hearts. The result will be that from the least of them to the greatest, no one will need to be taught by his neighbour, because everyone will know him. And he adds that this will be made possible because he will forgive all our sins and he will not remember our trespasses. This reset happened the day Jesus died for us on the cross. All our past and present sins, and any sins we may commit, have been forgiven, provided of course that we forsake them. And as a result of this forgiveness, God, from Pentecost and until today, has been able to put his Spirit back into man. The Holy Spirit is not just the spirit that man lost when Adam and Eve were cast out of Eden and the presence of God, but that Spirit is actually the Spirit of Jesus ! If Adam and Eve had possessed it, they would perhaps not have been so easily fooled by the serpent, but that's a pious wish. The Holy Spirit is theoretically limitless, but we limit him by the degree of obedience we are willing to offer him. This spirit searches everything, and even to the depths of God, Paul says in 1 Corinthians 2:10. That is why when we have this spirit, we no longer need to be taught what is good, since we have an inner testimony, no more need to be told how to live with God, since he himself leads us, we no longer need religion, since we are one with God. And if we are one with God, we should also be one with the brethren who are united with their God.

“You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts”. 2 Corinthians 3: 3.

“I will give them an undivided heart and put a new spirit in them; I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh, so that they may do what I ask of them”. Ezekiel 11: 19 and 36: 26

There is this immediate filling of our reservoir with super-fuel, a living water that circulates and renews itself until we are filled to all the fullness of God.

“For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” Ephesians 3:14-19.

But it is not enough just to be filled once : we still need to become what we claim to be. We are only transformed in our inner being by putting into practice the things that the Spirit plants in our hearts. This is what Jesus makes clear when he speaks of a house which is established on sand, and another which is established on rock. The filling is God's part, while the rooting and the inner transformation is our part. Our body inherited from this world will be supported by a healthy and combative spirit, but its renewal will only occur later, at the sound of a trumpet from God, we are told. We will then be made immortal and glorious.

“Before the coming of this faith, we were held in custody under the law, locked up until the faith that was to come would be revealed. So the law was our guardian until Christ came that we might be justified by faith. Now that this faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian. So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise”. Galatians 3: 23-29.

So of course, the rocket launcher – or the “core” religion – could be recovered and instrumentalized by the world, and this formal religion remains a great way to capture and appropriate the allegiance of the faithful. By perpetuating our separation from God, this formal religion remains an excellent means of appropriating the allegiance of the faithful, in order to control the impact of their testimony by controlling the way in which their faith is expressed and is perceived by others. What does the Bible say about religion? Surprisingly, although Moses established a form of religion specific to the Jews after their exodus from Egypt, the Bible is not at all partisan of religion. It affirms that any structure of authority is instituted and willed by God, like a child needs a pedagogue. Although necessary, structures are not an end in themselves. In Exodus 23 and Deuteronomy 6, God explains to his people something that is very important for us to understand. God tells them that he will not lead them into the freedom of their promised land in one step. He said, “I will not drive out its inhabitants until you are able to take possession of the land, lest the beasts of the field multiply against you.” Religion is one of those structures that are necessary to civilize nations. It holds the ground to prevent things from descending into chaos and from an infestation of demonic order, waiting to be replaced by the genuine thing. And it is up to us to gain our freedom in this area. We conquer it by knowing God.

“To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free”. John 8: 31-32.

 

What about shamanism, healers?

And what do you think, for example, of shamanism and the energies that are said to come from the earth? You do well to talk about it because these are trends that are on the rise. Doctors base their action on the chemistry of the body and healers on the energy of the body. In both cases, the notion of the spirit of man is ignored. Man is not a body but he is an embodied spirit. What we call “energies” from the earth are actually spirits from the invisible world, as in mediumship, a forbidden science because it opens us to a spiritual world that is opposed to God. They are demons. This becomes clearer to us when healers go into a trance state. So I guess we have to put hypnosis in this category? These are spiritual manipulations. We can't let just anyone break into our soul to organize things in their own way. This person could allow in some shadows without our knowledge. Moreover, sophrology is based on this principle. It leads to a different turn of mind, and this can be explained by the admittance in oneself of a spirit of performance. Are we ready to lose our personality to become more successful? I know groups of evangelical Christians which dope themselves at the level of the will by this kind of process. Their hypnotic praise songs and hammered messages are nothing but a form of applied sophrology, which is distressing when we know that these movements are gaining in importance. The disciples at Pentecost were not drunk, nor were they coerced, but they were uninhibited and joyful ! It is said that when the devil can no longer prevent us from witnessing, he will try to force us into a relationship with others that is not natural. These people get really weird without even realizing it. These sciences and practices belong to the rudiments of our world. But the earth was cursed when man listened to the voice of the serpent. The serpent was also cursed. Can anything good come out of something cursed, dead or on the way to be? Christ came from beyond our world to breathe into us a spirit that we had lost. So, as long as we can ask ourselves if something is good or bad, the answer is simple. Some things come in handy, like a box of medicine handy when I have a bad headache, but not everything builds us up the same way.

The return to nature is a very current trend. But most of those who seek fulfilment in this direction have grown up in a context of comfort with a bank account or that of their parents, the full refrigerator, the central heating and the car. Many of us do not know what it is like to be hungry, to be cold, or to be threatened by wild beasts or worse, by men. Most children have never seen a cow milked, or been able to try it. They didn't plant vegetables and understood the difficulty of getting something from the land. So we take a plane to go to a corner of the forest in South America, find ourselves in a camp with same as us, in the presence of false natives who, after having served us an interesting theory on the benefits of a return to “our roots”, will utter a few incantations and make us swallow a hallucinogenic potion that will make us sick as dogs. Then everyone will return home by the same means, thinking of being a transformed man or woman. What about the ceremonies that take place here, in the manner of the Amerindians or the nomadic tribes, at the sound of tambourines, with feathers and rattles? “Creating bridges between the visible world and that of the spirits. To meet the spirit of an animal that can serve as my guide in this life. I use the rattle and the drum to work with the souls, the energies of the living, those of the dead, places, plants, animals, human beings, elements. The goal is to bring back to the person what they need to heal or move forward, and to support them in their change,” says the shaman. Some seem to find it rewarding. I won't allow myself to be enslaved by anything, especially if it's a demon impersonating the spirit of a dead person or an animal. In my opinion, the positive point of these quests is that they make us realize that we are all looking for another dimension of being. The universe of Avatar, the communion with mother earth and nature, or for others, the spontaneous witchcraft highlighted in these distressing television series for teenagers, all this responds to a search for power and balance whose we have a legitimate need to live in this world. Subconsciously, we know that we are born naked and that we will have to earn the position of spiritual authority of the sons of God, which we have in Christ. For that is what it is all about : a growth towards the new world, and not a stagnation in the rudiments of the world under the so-called protection of a spirit, or of an earth goddess.

 

Can we not consider a soft shamanism?

… Yes no doubt, she said, and I understand that all these resources are the waters of the well, those which cannot quench the thirst. But do you see a problem in a simple and spontaneous approach to the elements and nature, as a source of energy and renewal? Can we not consider a gentle shamanism? Yes, of course, don't get me wrong. But, there is nothing new under the sun said a wise man. Nature is essential to us and I am the first to recognize its benefits. We need to dive back into it at regular intervals to recharge our batteries and to draw some of our balance from it, we also need to interact with it. We need the sun, fresh air, the fragrance of the trees and the undergrowth after the rain, the grandiose perspectives offered by the landscapes. Everything is pure for the pure. …And yet, no, nature is no longer really our friend and it is not our ally.

“Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life. It will produce a mess and thorns for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return”. Genesis 3:17-19.

The earth has been affected like us, so what we reap is in fact what we bring into it. Some pretend they can channel the energies. But I mean : even if those energies were pure, which I doubt, how do I know that the pipe is clean? For, to what extent are we pure, unaltered, insensitive to the disturbances that the earth and our cosmos have undergone, and still able to see what was at the origin? How do I know that the waters are pure ? If there is a corpse in the well, everything that will come out of it will be polluted. The earth is not our bride either and it never has been. When God created man, he confronted him with the still unaltered Creation, “but man did not find there a helper like himself.” In reality, this nature which has fallen from its original glory, and the post-flood man, are strangers to each other. Man, originally a vegetarian, has become a predator in order to survive. The shepherd has become a wolf in his own fold.

“The fear and dread of you will fall on all the beasts of the earth, and on all the birds in the sky, on every creature that moves along the ground, and on all the fish in the sea; they are given into your hands”. Genesis 9: 2.

Being predators is not our deep nature. Contemplation is our nature. Man is made to love. A child grows up looking at what he loves, and he becomes what he loves. Or else, and this is much sadder: he becomes what he has hated too much. God wants us to become like him, by looking at him, by contemplating him, this is the meaning of the word adoration. Nature is an interesting medium, in the sense that it is the matrix from which we were drawn. We were fashioned from the dust of this earth. Nature is a mirror which reflects the action of God on matter. We were born from this process, our bodies having been formed in this factory that produces life, before being invested with the breath that would make us into the image of God.

“Then God said, “Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds.” And it was so”. … “God saw that it was good”. Genesis 1:11, 12

“And God said, “Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the vault of the sky.” Genesis 1:20.

“And God said, “Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: the livestock, the creatures that move along the ground, and the wild animals, each according to its kind.” And it was so”. Genesis 1:24.

“Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.” Genesis 2:7.

God shows us man who is a spiritual being from the start. Living beings are taken from the earth but they are sustained by a spirit of life. When the spirit is withdrawn, the body returns to dust. This is where the fundamental difference between creationism and evolutionism resides. Atheist scientists consider only the physiological aspect of life. For them, the whole being is extinguished with the cessation of physiological functions.

“All creatures look to you to give them their food at the proper time. When you give it to them, they gather it up; when you open your hand, they are satisfied with good things. When you hide your face, they are terrified; when you take away their breath, they die and return to the dust. When you send your Spirit, they are created, and you renew the face of the ground”. Psalm 104: 27-30.

The second part of this verse represents the hope that, one day, some life forms that have been lost will return to existence spontaneously, in a sort of resurrection. I am not a an advocate of pets, because in many cases pets are substitutes for real human relationships and they are also a nuisance and a subject of tensions with the neighborhood. But God – and even you – could theoretically raise up a dear missing companion in the new world, why not.

Yet we have grown by receiving other contributions. Man is not an animal like the others since God has placed his own immortal nature in us, which he has not done for any other animal. And therein lies the secret of our immortality.

“Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground. ” So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” Genesis 1: 26-27.

No fox would want to become a mouse. No blackbird would want to become a worm. No man would want to plunge back into the womb of his mother who has aged and is showing the signs of death, or that man would have a serious identity problem. A man would not want to have children from his mother either, it would be “unnatural”. Now, and I may shock you, that is exactly what we are doing with our research on genetic improvement of the breed and with the search for new identities. And on a spiritual level, with the revival of animism and shamanism or that of religion, even Christian. I'm going to sound high-sounding to you, but there's only one thing that can lift us above what we are, and that's the Word of God, it's the Bible. It is actually our relationship to God as described in the Bible.

I have to tell you that if I don't go out into nature, meditating with God, nature depresses me. And many people tell me the same. Walking in nature depresses them. I come across walkers and joggers every day who stare at their small screen, headphones plugged in their ears, and others accompanied by their dog. Even in the midsts of nature, men constantly need a vis à vis. … Here I think I can distinguish myself because I like to go running alone in the forest near my home ! My friends think I'm reckless... I admire you while understanding them a little, unfortunately there are some crazy people out there. Our attitude can protect us to some extent. But unless you find a small paradise on respite, nature is not what it should be. It is very damaged by the exploitation and the superabundant activities of man. And when it's not by man, it's by climatic events. When I photograph, I strive to discover plots of nature in which I can perceive how nature has been able to escape the diktat of man by expressing a little of its spontaneity. Or else, I recognize the way in which man has been able to organize a portion of nature by leaving room for it to express itself. In both instances, it is a created harmony, and not an original chaos. Loggers, before mechanization, were the gardeners of the forest. From now on, they are the knackers of it, and by the way, some expressions of modern art make me think of a form of slaughter of the canons of beauty and harmony. I understand that some people do not feel comfort when they walk through these wounded and gutted forests. Some would like to drive the men out of them by letting the wolves settle there, but that would be another aberration. The solution is not found in nature. The earth will not evolve without man, because God made it for man, and not man for the earth. But man must complete his growth and achieve his transformation. And only then can nature celebrate the new man while being itself restored to its magnificence. There is this passage in Romans 8 that I find jubilant:

“I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the first-fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies”.

 

The Bible: an encyclopedia of legalism, or a love letter to mankind?

Still discussing with that friend: “I wish I could read the Bible like you read it. But I find that a lot of comments are harsh, condemnatory, and I can't find the same pleasure in them as you do. It's also why I like the way you write, because you demystify things by making them more accessible”. What you say here touches me and encourages me, so I'm going to share my secret with you. Why does the Bible lead some to feel condemned and others to feel loved and justified? It's a simple matter of position or perspective. When I resume reading the Bible after pursuing the things of this world for some time, the exercise can be tedious and even unpleasant, a bit like a cold shower that one does not want, because a certain opacity highlights my spiritual laziness and my short-cuts. But a cold shower can boost our circulation and bring our thoughts back into place. It's like physical effort : when you get used to it, the thing becomes pleasant and even essential because there is a stimulation and a reward. The Bible is food for our spirit, just like speaking in tongues. However, what makes a real difference to me is knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I am on the narrow path that leads to life. The Word then becomes “a lamp to my feet and a light to my path”, to use the expression found in Psalm 119:105. It springs up spontaneously in me and guides me very practically. I had a dream one night, that was long ago, in which I saw myself walking up a lonely path leading uphill. Down in the Rhône plain, people stagnated in their towns and on their highways of knowledge, even going “to church”, or caught up in their usual activities. All this collective emulation nourishes our need for social life, but it does not engage us in our spiritual emancipation or in our unity with God. What makes a difference is not the fact of leading the life of a hermit, or on the contrary, that of termites, but it is the quest for a truth, in reality the quest for a person, the one who said: “I am the way, the truth and the life”. When you share someone's goals, sooner or later you become their friend. And if this friend wishes to lead us apart on a sometimes lonely path in order to show us certain things, we must consent to it, and that is actually a blessing. The real Jesus is not the collective Jesus that we see in churches, but he is the one who guides us from within and who precedes us on our life path. The happiness of knowing Him is prolonged when we can share this knowledge, and the presence that accompanies it with others, what Jesus calls “making disciples”. But in reality, Jesus mostly made friends, because everyone else abandoned him at some point. And then there is another reason why we sometimes find the Bible austere and rigorous. The original of the Bible is in Hebrew, and in Greek as far as the New Testament is concerned. However, the semantics of these two languages is much broader than the French or the English in which we read these texts. The words used in western cultures are often simplistic and leave little room for a different interpretation than what the translators wanted to convey to us. It is a difficult job to translate one language into another, revealing other meanings that are perceptible in the original language. This is, for example, what the authors of the Mirror Bible have done, which for the moment is only available in English and Spanish. Reading these broader interpretations can give us a much better idea of God's thought and above all, of his love for men.

 

Who owns the Earth?

But coming back to our subject which is this relationship that man has with nature and with the earth, I would like to say this again: After their fall and their expulsion from Eden, God said to man, and to the woman, that from now on they will have to subjugate the earth and that she will give it back to them by producing chaos and thorns. The harmony is broken. The Garden in question was not the whole earth, but a space that God had organized east of Eden, a privileged place, ordered according to the word of God and in which God had breathed the vital force that characterizes Him. But men have been driven out of this haven and the land in which we now live is the suburbs. The Garden is on the other side of the wall and we can no longer access it, at least in the natural. It is written that the cherubim wielding the flaming sword guard access to it. George Lucas is therefore not the inventor of the lightsaber.

Nature is not only material, but it harbours spiritual entities, and this is something shamans and healers know well. It is no coincidence that our earth is given a feminine identity: Gaïa, mother earth. In Revelation 14, we read these lines that remain an enigma for many of us:

“Then I saw the Lamb standing on Mount Zion, and with him the hundred and forty-four thousand who have his name and his Father's name written in their foreheads. I heard a voice that came from the sky and sounded like great waters, like the roar of a violent clap of thunder. It was like the sound of an orchestra of harpists playing their instruments. All these people were singing a new song before the throne, before the four living creatures, and before the elders. And this song, no one could learn it except the hundred and forty-four thousand, the redeemed of the earth. They are those who have not defiled themselves with women, they have remained virgins. They follow the Lamb wherever he goes. They were redeemed from among men to be offered as first fruits to God and to the Lamb. There was no lie in their mouth. They are beyond reproach”.

This passage describes those who are friends of the Lamb and who are likely to accompany him on his return to earth. I am not qualified to give a complete explanation, but I would just like to share what God has shown me and which relates more specifically to verse 4. It is written, in English, that these people, numbering one hundred and forty -four thousand, twelve thousand from each tribe, are the redeemed of the earth "who were not defiled with women but remained virgins". When I read this passage for the first time, I said to myself : oh well, for me it is game over whatever I can do ! But later on thinking about it, I said to myself that if it was over for me, it was also over for Peter, for Paul and no doubt for a good number of the apostles of Jesus whose status or private life. Yet the twelve apostles are the foundations of the new Jerusalem with their corresponding patriarch. It would seem that this group of people are actually the Jews who will be saved through the great tribulation according to Bible scholars – sorry for Jehovah's Witnesses. But all the same, I said to myself on the one hand that this selection criterion represented a serious injustice towards women, who will not be admitted among those close to Jesus, and on the other hand, that the undertone is enormous since it discredits the value of marriage and marital relationships – and women themselves, since to commune with them would be considered a defilement for the man. This understanding was obviously wrong and at odds with the rest of the Bible. So, as so often when a passage from the Bible poses a problem for me, I took a closer interest in the translation. The word woman, in the Greek, is the word “Gune”, and it is in the singular: “Those who are not defiled with the woman”. Why was it translated as "with women"? No doubt the translators thought they did well in making a distinction between the legitimate relationship with the wife, and illicit relationships. But it is also written further that these people are virgins, and therefore even legitimate spouses would be disqualified.

But let's imagine that the meaning of the sentence is in reality: "Those who have not defiled themselves with the woman". Yes but in this case, which woman is it? It can only be a woman in the symbolic sense, in the sense of an allegiance or a cult dedicated to a woman. The word Gune also gave the word Queen in English. We know that John, like other prophets, used cryptic language on certain occasions in order to avoid bringing down religious censure and the wrath of power on believers. In the ancient writings of the Jews, those which describe a pre-Edenic cosmogony, there is mention of the existence of a woman named Lilith. She only appears once in the Bible, in Isaiah 34 :14, where she is compared to a bird of the night. A better translation of the meaning of her name would be that she is the one who sows the wind and reaps the storm. Her servants are seductresses who are called succubi, or incubi when they are male, the night husbands or the night women of the Africans, the jinns of the North Africans, our sirens and our nymphs, but also our cruel vampires. The legend, if indeed it is only a legend, says that she was the first wife of Adam. But Adam would have found her unworthy of him, and he repudiated her. It was then that God made him Eve, a temporal helper drawn from his own flesh and from his dream. Still according to the legend, it would be this Lilith, who, fallen into disgrace and devoured by jealousy, then slipped into the skin of a snake to access the Garden of Eden in order to tempt Eve there and ensure that this original couple in turn falls into disgrace. This stratagem would perhaps allow him to recover his Adam. And that's what happened. God cursed her for what she did, but Lilith remained very present in the religion of the Babylonians where she is a Mesopotamian goddess linked to the wind and the storm. Alternately Ishtar among the Babylonians and Assyrians, Inanna among the Sumerians, Astarte or Ashera among the Jews and their neighbours, Isis among the Egyptians, Venus or Ceres among the Romans, Rhea or Demeter among the Greeks, Diana or Artemis among the Ephesians, the “woman” is present everywhere and she has a hold on everything. 1 John 5:18 says this: “We know that we are of God, and that the whole world is under the power of the evil one”. Another passage from the Bible teaches us that man is responsible for transferring this authority, whether existential, religious or political, to the forces of evil.

“Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. The tempter came to him and said, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread. ” Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God. ’” Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. “If you are the Son of God, ” he said, “throw yourself down. For it is written: “‘He will command his angels concerning you, and they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone. ’ ” Jesus answered him, “It is also written: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test. ’” Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendour. “All this I will give you, ” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me. ” (Luke 4: I will give you all this power, and the glory of these kingdoms; for it has been given to me, and I give it to whom I will). Jesus said to him, “Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only. ’ ” Then the devil left him, and angels came and attended him”.   Matthew 4.

Some will object that it is not about the same goddess, but in reality, the same spirit drives them all. She is considered a symbol of womanhood, an astral deity associated with the planet Venus, a goddess of love and war or of fertility and harvests. She is a sovereign deity whose support is often necessary to reign over a kingdom. Evil should not be seen everywhere, and love and compassion spring naturally in man from a vital force imparted to him by God. But when we speak of the mother goddess, or of the mother earth, the Pachamama, or even of the Queen of Heaven, of the Madonna or the Virgin, or when we practice shamanism, the recourse to energies of the earth, energetic healing in places charged with energy, and to a certain extent, when we resort to plants or hallucinogenic or other substances, we draw from one and the same source which manifests itself in a variety of forms sprawling. You know, sometimes we just invented more up-to-date names for old practices. Divination by oracles, omens or tarot, magnetism and its Asian form which is Reiki and Kundalini, or even the secret of healers which is a magic incantation, are occult sciences. They appeal, not to energies, but to spirits which belong to the demonic world. Most healers know this, and indeed many suffer from not being themselves anymore and from being prey to uncontrollable urges. Those who engage in these paths are in reality estranged from God and from themselves, and end up being lost if they do not have this burst of common sense which consists in abandoning their practices to return to God.

“When you enter the land the Lord your God is giving you, do not learn to imitate the detestable ways of the nations there. Let no one be found among you who sacrifices their son or daughter in the fire, who practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft, or casts spells, or who is a medium or spiritualist or who consults the dead. Anyone who does these things is detestable to the Lord; because of these same detestable practices the Lord your God will drive out those nations before you. You must be blameless before the Lord your God. The nations you will dispossess listen to those who practice sorcery or divination. But as for you, the Lord your God has not permitted you to do so”.   Deuteronomy 8.

In the Bible, God warns us that we should not have contact with those who practice these disciplines. In Acts 19, we witness spectacular healings, and also a few exorcisms which apparently are sufficiently impressive for a part of the population to come and confess their practices and burn their treatises on the occult sciences in the public square. God wants to protect us from the influence of spirits that he calls liars and who will seek to lead us into madness. It is a dreadful and very organized world. Understand that the Queen of Heaven, for example, is not Mary, the mother of Jesus, but a spiritual entity has usurped this identity in order to be able to control Christian worship. Why are Catholic priests vowed to celibacy? Cybele's priests are eunuchs. In the Bible, the Queen of Heaven is always associated with the Baal, the transgender gods who control populations. Today, we can associate this symbolism with abortion, LGBT, feminists, but also sometimes with defenders of the rights of minorities when they defend a spiritual identity or one associated with the land, and in many cases, defenders of the environment when they make their fight their religion. This woman was destined to be the light of mankind, the bride of Adam. Cursed, it seems because of her proud presumption, not virgin but barren, she might also be that prostitute frequented by the kings of the earth, seated on a scarlet beast and drunk with the blood of the saints, of chapter 17 of the book of Revelation. Its destruction by a new type of government is announced, and its influence will then be transferred to the beast, which is the Antichrist, another figure of speech to avoid a direct confrontation with the power. For the meaning of the woman seated on the beast is the association of a religious organization and a political order, or more precisely of a religious leader and a military dictator. This beast will rise again and will in turn be destroyed at the coming of Christ. For God has now given mankind a very worthy new bridegroom, and that lawful bridegroom is, of course, Christ.

 

Water that imposes itself through conviction.

The Holy Spirit is the spouse that our inner being seeks more or less consciously. This is why, as soon as we are put in contact with it, the living water imposes itself through a deep conviction that leaves no doubt. You know, Jesus, until he ascended into heaven, was a physical person with the limitations of a person. But Christ is a spiritual being made of light and power that transcends our universe. He created it, and so there is no limit to what He can do, in us in theory and even through us. All those things that we are tempted to seek out in the rudiments of the world are fully available in Christ. But we do not know, because religion has classified everything related to the supernatural of God in “Secret of State” documents : “Strictly reserved for saints beatified by the council of the church”. For example: healing, health, peace and joy, provision and protection, guidance – these things are offered to us in a pure form and without counterpart. But for all that we manage to get out of this world, we will have to give up a part of ourselves, hence the expression “lose his soul”. The notion of a sacrifice once again? You are right. At the difference that with Christ, God himself offered a definitive sacrifice that gives us access to everything.

Won precisely by the superabundant life and by this living water which flows freely from the luminous being who speaks to her, the revivified woman returns to stir up the inhabitants of Suchar, who in turn want to hear him. They immediately believe in what Jesus announces to them, and they throw a party at him ! Unlike his fellow citizens who will continue to snub him. They are religious, calculating, petty people – when I say “religious”, I don't mean like the little sisters and the priests who, when they are founded on Christ, are radiant beings. I do indeed think that you are contrasting the word religious with the word self-determined? It is exactly that. Anyone can be religious – me sometimes. These well-dressed corpses come together to flatter each other and convince themselves that they are better than others who are ill dressed. They judge on appearances and not on the heart, and yet that reassures them. Jesus looks at the heart, and I will never forget how his gaze once pierced me. Faced with this gaze, no one will be able to hide behind a tradition or behind any authority. We are all responsible for our actions and for what we cling to. Jesus was telling the religious that, because they had rebuilt the tombs of the prophets, they were in solidarity with what their predecessors had done when they killed those prophets. Those who adhere to a religion are in solidarity with the image of justice that religion transmits and with the mysticism in which it has buried the truth. It is disturbing when we know how many innocent people died during the inquisition, the religious wars, and more recently the persecution of the Jews and when the church made itself the silent ally of the fascist and totalitarian regimes.

 

The shadowy side.

Yet, she was telling me, I think we all have a darker side, and we have to accept it as part of us. People identify more readily with those who have integrated it and who dare to live acknowledging their shadowy side. We have to be objective and honest about who we are if we want to be authentic. I also read a book which, at a key moment, allowed me to face this shadow side. The title is precisely: “Taming your shadow”. The author explains that we must accept the sometimes unloved side of our personality, no longer repress it but tame it to make it an ally. This will allow us to gain better self-esteem, and from there better relationships with others. This is really very interesting! The Bible also speaks of the old man, who is our inherited personality, and it teaches us to gradually replace him with the new man, the one who is formed in us under the leadership of the Spirit. It teaches us how to bring these two personalities together in a wise way. We can't just ignore the one we don't like, because as Blaise Pascal said: “whoever wants to play the angel, plays the beast”. I also had to go on a journey at some point, to do a bit of trail to confront my old man. It is, moreover, the most striking experience I have had during the second part of my life. I had kept a pitiful memory of what was supposed to be the “journey” of my youth, the one that should have continued for a lifetime. An injury had led to the premature end of the adventure, and to a love tragedy which later ended in the death of my friend – at least that was the perception I had kept of a chain of unfortunate circumstances. Aware of the blockage that remained in me following this failure, I left fifteen years ago, after my divorce, for a kind of pilgrimage in my own footsteps in order to face this memory. During a rather extraordinary trip, I must say, I had to smash with words every piece of the concrete screed of denial that I had cast thirty years earlier on events that were too painful and that I had been powerless to deal with. This allowed the shameful memories and the pain to rise back to light, but also to each happy memory to protect me, while allowing each word, each step, each laughter or birdsong, to be re-heard, each dream, every caress, every scent, to be felt all over again, every misty morning or glowing sky to spark hope for happy tomorrows in the light. My new-found love accompanied me throughout the journey and I was able to tell her in a daily heart-to-heart, each of my thoughts and my desire to love her with all my heart. I have never cried so much, but those tears brought back to life a heart that was dead and withered. Three months later, at the end of the trip, everything was laid flat, in my mind as on paper. I was at peace, reconciled with my past, in full complicity with her and confident in the future. I also met in a dream during this trip, the one who accompanied me during the twelve years that followed, until her death. I received her as a gift from our God, from my love.

 

No one is a prophet among his own.

And your mother, your family, do they read the things you write? I hope that one day they will have this openness, because I wish I could transmit some good things to them from my experiences. Mom didn't want to read my book which, for the moment, seems to upset her. I made my mother read my last column, that of December. She didn't say anything, but when I asked her, she said she had read some beautiful things that moved her, but got stuck on my criticisms of religion. However, I cannot speak of a real hope without denouncing some of the subterfuges, otherwise I would only be maintaining religious propaganda. There is so much hypocrisy everywhere. Jesus said:

“Meanwhile, when a crowd of many thousands had gathered, so that they were trampling on one another, Jesus began to speak first to his disciples, saying: “Be on your guard against the yeast of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy. There is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known. What you have said in the dark will be heard in the daylight, and what you have whispered in the ear in the inner rooms will be proclaimed from the roofs.”  Luke 12.

Here's what might be embarrassing, if we're waiting for the day of the big public unpacking. So, why not live in this awareness and be transparent when possible. There is nothing sadder than a sad child, I was writing in my column of December. And there is nothing more pathetic than a follower of Jesus who is silenced by the do-gooders around him. A Muslim or a communist converts to Christ, and he is immediately crucified in one way or another. Satan hates those who escape him, and for his family, the convert becomes the subject of opprobrium on the part of the community. But things can be sneakier. Jesus said: “A prophet is despised only in his country, among his parents and in his household”. He probably knew what he was talking about. Religion wants to ignore or silence what goes not in its direction. Thank God, not all parents are going to want to kill their dissident children ! But they will very often put them at a disadvantage or deprive them of their blessing, a restraint which they will use to put pressure on them in a kind of emotional blackmail. I felt it with my father in the beginning, since I converted while I was working with him. I was young, very immature, and I made mistakes that I assume. But I clearly sensed this disapproval. I still feel it with my mother, to a lesser degree than before, but my forehead has also hardened. Even though they really loved me, my parents had some expectations for me, and one was that I would comfort them about the life choices they had made. And by changing sides, I disturbed their universe and disappointed their expectations. My wife could not stand this silent disapproval joined by part of the family, and she preferred to regain her independence. I didn't know how to protect her. Things are sneaky because we face an invisible spiritual world that manipulates those around us, parents, uncles and aunts, brothers and sisters, and even our children. Moreover, an adage says that God does not have grandchildren.

Yet my mother is a great person when you ignore her positions. She is loved and respected by many people. Reuben, to whom she is linked by the character she inherited, was the eldest of Jacob's sons. He was the firstborn, the son of his father's vigour, the gift his mother Leah could give to her husband to win his love, which was a little sad if you think. The sign of Reuben is the rising sun, and it is the mandrake, a plant with amazing virtues if we refer to the story of Genesis 30. Reuben is the most accomplished of men humanly speaking. He is cultured, hard-working, positive and always encouraging. He is an optimist, a lover of man in his passion and in his achievements. If a word were to characterize my mother's feelings, it would be the word magnificent. And it's not just the green plants : her divinity, the churches, the religious art, the beautiful feelings, the family, the earthly heritage, everything is magnificent ! …but the dissenting and rejected Christ will remain a mystery to her until she crosses the Jordan River, the river of sorrow and tears, to join the rest of the community of those redeemed by the blood of Christ and by him alone. Ruben loved this transitional land so much that when conquering the promised land, he stopped on the way, because he found some green pastures east of the Jordan and the promised land. He founded his own replica of Jerusalem there. I suspect that many Roman Catholics are Reubenites. What a woman wants, God wants it, and if she prays and seeks God, it is so that things take the turn she wishes. Ruben is very protective and mum was an exemplary mother. Oh, I can understand her : she fights for the good of her family and for us to exist. But a faith based on feelings, sometimes leads to a lack of discernment, and it used to annoy my father. However, there had to be this balance between the two, because my father was a leader of the tribe of Judah who swore only by efficiency. There is therefore in her this continual tension to keep up with appearances. Even if her maternal love allows her to support me, Mama systematically rejects anything that scratches a tradition that she carries in her heart as a duty and an honour. She unconditionally supports those who maintain it. She wants to excuse them for everything, to forgive them for everything, to believe that good will come even from mistakes, if it were possible for them to happen in the family or in her church. She feels invested with the responsibility of perpetuating what generations of Catholics, bearers of all the richness of their tradition, have transmitted to her. There must be people like her in society, otherwise we would all have become communists! Laughs.

 

Come out from among them.

You know, sometimes people pray all their life for God to save their children. And when God lays a lifeline before them, they push it away because things don't turn out the way their romantic minds had envisioned. We guess it when reading the Gospels : Mary, and the brothers of Jesus, were certainly affected during part of their lives by a spirit of conformity to the tradition. By honouring the taboos and the sacred cows of their tradition, exemplary parishioners will deprive themselves, and deprive their children, from the living water of Jesus.

“No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. Otherwise, the new piece will pull away from the old, making the tear worse. And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins.” Mark 2: 21-23.

Jesus also said that we cannot mix the old with the new, or else things will tear or shatter and all is lost. Living water is the nature of the coming world, and it needs new recipients. One cannot grow in this new identity while remaining in a religiously traditional context. This separation is seen by many as a betrayal. The priests and teachers of the law were furious with Jesus. Losing the parent's blessing is a dreadful thing and Jesus insists that we honour them. Striving to transmit everlasting values to them is the most noble thing, even if it is not always understood at the time. But we must not stop there, because God has made the promise to welcome and take care of the seekers of new horizons. “Therefore, “Come out from them and be separate, says the Lord. Touch no unclean thing, and I will receive you”. This promise from 2 Corinthians 6:17 echoes Isaiah 52:11: “You people, leave, leave; get out of Babylon! Touch nothing that is unclean. You men who carry the Lord’s vessels”. “You who carry the Lord’s vessels”: here is a pretty way of saying that we are the receptacles of the Spirit of the living God, in a time when the thing was not yet admitted. God reminds us that, in order to be able to marry the nature of Christ, man must first leave father and mother, that is to say, he must separate himself from the rudiments of the world, as Abraham had to undertake his own adventure with his God. He did it on a simple word that God had addressed to him: “The Lord said to Abram, “Leave your country, your relatives, and your father’s family, and go to the land I will show you”. Genesis 12:1. Try to imagine that this God whom he discovered in the depths of his heart and whom he obeyed, was not even known to his fathers ! The Babylonians had enough gods in their pantheon for him to chose from, but no ! Abraham did not have the Bible, yet each of his obedient steps added pages to our Bible. And right now, the online audio Bible is talking about this great adventure of Abraham, and how it continued with Isaac. Trusting in God can open us up to great prospects. In any case, it makes life interesting!

 

This is how you should pray.

Our words have a certain power. But a word received from God has absolute power and it is in our interest not to let it fall to the ground. We see it for example when Abraham sends his servant to seek a wife for his son in his family who lives far away – a story related in the reading of the day (January 10). The servant Eliezer does not know how to tackle the question. But as soon as he arrives near the town where his master's relatives live, he goes by the well – wells seem to be places where things happen, at least in those days –, and he seizes the first thought that crosses his mind, he prays about it, and things happen exactly as he prays : before his eyes amazed, Rebekah comes out, who will become Isaac's wife ! In Matthew 6, Jesus says :

“And when you pray, don’t be like those people who don’t know God. They continue saying things that mean nothing, thinking that God will hear them because of their many words. Don’t be like them, because your Father knows the things you need before you ask him. So when you pray, you should pray like this: ‘Our Father in heaven, may your name always be kept holy. May your kingdom come and what you want be done, here on earth as it is in heaven. Give us the food we need for each day. Forgive us for our sins, just as we have forgiven those who sinned against us. And do not cause us to be tempted, but save us from the Evil One. ’ The kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours forever. Amen”.

Jesus teaches us to pray for general objectives, but each circumstance is the object of a particular word. God wishes to inspire us with the code or the key which, if we know how to grasp it, will unlock the situation. For this to work, we need to be moving, just as the car needs to move forward for it to be steered. Everyone can understand that if we think that the one we believe in can only act through our ritual prayers and our repeated mantras, or if we have to extol her greatness to confer on our divinity an existence, we should review our basics. We don't want to become Christian wizards. In 1 Kings 18, the prophets of the false deity Baal, in the service of the wicked queen Jezebel and her husband Ahab, invoke their god while manhandling themselves for a whole day for a sign of his existence. Elijah watches this mi'kmaq with his arms crossed. The sign they are waiting for does not come. But then, at a simple pronouncement from Elijah, fire descends from heaven and consumes the sacrifice he has prepared with the stones of the altar and the water of the ditch. God and his angels are only waiting for our adherence to his principles, and our commitment, to act. A prayer in the Holy Spirit sets in motion in the spiritual world, things that are supposed to line up according to the will of God. The earnest prayer of the righteous has great efficacy, says James. In the city of Ephesus, by healing the sick, Paul and Barnabas unwillingly ruined the business and reputation of the Silver Workmen in Ephesus. The makers of these little silver temples of Diana that pilgrims snap up, fearing to see the majesty of her who delights them reduced to nothing, as well as their hopes of profit, start shouting for hours: “Great is the Diana of the Ephesians!”. So that the whole city is in turmoil. The same thing happens when Stephen or the apostles testify of their faith before the Sanhedrin. If we are willing to admit it, the inconsistencies of religion make it pathetic and I refuse to mention this place of pilgrimage which sums them all together. Like God himself, the Bible does not need to be proven or defended. Those who have studied it know that it is totally supernatural. For example : the many words that announce the coming of a Messiah. I am sure that many of these words were written under inspiration, without even those who wrote them being able to understand their full significance. Mathematicians have calculated the probability that these hundreds of concordant prophecies can be realized in their smallest details as was the case, and the figure put forward for these probabilities is simply astronomical. With God, nothing is left to chance.

However, and I must give reason to those who want to see hope for the world in a form of ecumenism or in agnosticism : nothing prevents God from being found, in – or rather in spite of of the religions of the world. Some beliefs are fanciful, others are more opaque or downright infernal. Some are still poetic like Zoroastrianism, even dreamlike like the extraordinary beliefs of the Australian aborigines. For even among these men who have lived cut off from the rest of the world, some say, for tens of thousands of years, there is, in their Dreamtime tradition, the consciousness of a saviour. In fact, everywhere in the world, in all religions, a Messiah is at least suggested when he does not appear clearly. In Ecclesiastes 3: 10 it is written:

“God has made everything beautiful in its time. He has put thoughts of the forever in man’s mind, yet man cannot understand the work God has done from the beginning to the end”.

This is perhaps what many believers have lacked down the ages: the big picture we have of history today. An exciting book was written years ago by a missionary named Don Richardson. In “Eternity in Their Hearts,” an out-of-print edition, he brought together evidence collected from various tribal traditions, oral and written, of a collective Christ consciousness. The synopsis of the book reads: “Thomas Huxley and Herbert Spencer in England, William H. Morgan in America, Marx and Engels in Germany and Lenin in Russia believed that Tylor's 'father of anthropology' theory, was the noose around the neck of religion! They hoped, by popularizing and applying this theory, to provide the planks and nails of the coffin of religion. In order to verify the foundations of this theory, dozens of young anthropologists spread to the four corners of the globe. Just when they expected to find “primitive” cultures uniformly devoid of monotheistic beliefs, they were shocked to discover hundreds of examples of faith in one true God ! The evidence of these facts was beginning to show that Tylor was wrong. Don Richardson recounts, through incredible examples, how the concept of a supreme God has endured for centuries in hundreds of cultures around the world”.

 

To an unknown God.

Another proof of this universality of the one God and of his Messiah sometimes appears in miscellaneous facts. For example: how can we explain that thousands of Muslims who pray their God to reveal Himself, receive in a dream a vision of Christ, and of Christ Jesus? Will they be able to talk about it with their Imam? Will they find an attentive ear to their experience within their religion? This is unlikely, as it is unlikely that Catholics who receive a revelation of Christ in a dream or by reading the Bible and who wish to bear witness to it in their church, will not simply be silenced or have their experience taken over by their tradition. Tradition lights the candles when the mass begins and blows them out when everyone returns home. It proclaims that Jesus is Lord, but it submits him to the decisions of the pope and the clergy and to the supervision of the Virgin Mary. It offers a simulacrum of awakening which is renewed once a week. But Christ escapes all religious standards.

“Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: “People of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: to an unknown god. So you are ignorant of the very thing you worship—and this is what I am going to proclaim to you. “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. ‘For in him we live and move and have our being. As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring”.   Acts 17.

For many men, Jesus remains this unknown God. Was he a Christian? I will disappoint you : Jesus was a Jew and he was one by adoption. Was Abraham a Jew? He was no more. The term Yehudim designated from a certain time, the descendants of the fourth of the sons of Israel who had the name Yehuda, or Judah in English. His mother, Leah, had given him this name which in her language meant: “I praise you, oh my God”, because she had obtained a victory over her sister Rachel, whom she considered a rival at the time towards their common husband. Each time you exclaim : “Thank you, my God, for granting me this victory”, you are, in the sight and knowledge of angels and men, a Yehudim, a Jew in the etymological sense of the term. Although he is the ancestor of the Jewish people, Abraham was not of the Jewish race but he was from the Babylonian empire. How's that, Abraham, a Babylonian?? Yes, and he also lived with his father Terah, in Ur, in Chaldea. Mesopotamia is the place where the first Eden was located, and Babylon, with its famous hanging gardens, represents the fruit of man's efforts to rebuild in his own way what he lost when he was driven out of the original Eden. She is the diabolical, or earthly if you prefer, equivalent of the heavenly Jerusalem. The Greek word diabolos means to slander, to accuse falsely. It is taken from the word "diaballo" which means to throw through, as one throws the dice, or to juggle. Because he did not want to submit to God, man tried to play a poker game with the devil. But the devil is far too clever for the unregenerate man, he is a master magician, he knows how to juggle even with the word of God. It is therefore from all this distorted background that God asks Abraham to separate himself. He must leave the family ties, the tradition, the religion, the ancestral gods – in fact, everything that has been transmitted to him by the world, by tradition and by his family –, so that God can out of nothing, reveal himself all over again. Through his exodus and the exodus of his people, their journey to a promised land, and the struggle to keep faith in the promises regardless of what their material eyes see, Abraham became the father of our faith. The existence of a new earth will appear to them as a reward for their expectation. It is said of faith that it is the firm assurance of things hoped for, a demonstration of those not seen. It will come sooner or later to reward with an inheritance, those who believe in the promises God has made to them. Even if he was not ethnically, Abraham was certainly a forerunner of Judaism in terms of identity and hope. His first name: Abram, means “the Father is exalted”. After he invited him to leave his homeland and his father's house, God gave him a new name: Abraham, a name that symbolizes: “He who, by the breath of God, becomes the father of a multitude of peoples and nations”. It often happens that God wants to change our name when it does not correspond to our new spiritual identity. It is thus that Jacob the deceiver became Israel, the Prince of God, that Saul, the demanding one, became Paul, the little one, and that Simon the reed that bends in the wind became Peter, the rock. So, if we believe his name, Abraham is at the origin of all the nations that welcomed the faith in the Messiah of the Jews. On a human level, Abraham is as universal a being as Adam and Eve can be. Having gone to do prospecting and having accumulated an inheritance which is now accessible to us pagans, he is like an uncle from America to all of us! You know, these distinctions of origin and races like Arianism, Semitism, blacks, whites, they are nonsense. These differences are very superficial, as a brother can be different from his sister. Jews shouldn't take themselves for something, and neither should we. What really makes a difference is the Spirit we relate to. The Bible says that, as Esau and Jacob fought from their mother's womb, two posterities fight between them. One, represented by Esau, was satisfied with the enjoyment of this earth and the pleasures of life. The other, Jacob, was certainly no better to begin with, but he wrestled with God to rise above his deceitful and petty nature. He saw heaven open and the angels ascending and descending. The Bible shows us which one was loved and favoured by God. In Romans 2, Paul says:

“A person is not a Jew who is one only outwardly, nor is circumcision merely outward and physical. No, a person is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is circumcision of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the written code. Such a person’s praise is not from other people, but from God”.

Paul says that to please God, it is not enough to have a pious appearance, but that one must be transformed from within and that this belongs to all men without distinction of race or people. But from there to wanting to adhere to the theology of the replacement of Israel by the church, there is a step that must not be taken ! God is not finished with this people. Israel plays and will play a key role in late days events. At the end of the big fight, it is Israel that will welcome the return of the Messiah to earth, but after some twists and turns since he will start by welcoming a false messiah. Through the teaching on the tribes of Israel, God also has fundamental values to transmit to us all, unsuspected riches that apply to all of humanity. We must not forget that Israel and Jerusalem, in their meaning, are a model in reduced size of the humanity of tomorrow. Despite all the vagaries and shortcomings it has shown during its history, just like the Church for that matter, this people has transmitted to us the knowledge of the true God and that of the true history of man. He did it at a high price. Israel is, and will remain, the first fruits of the new humanity. This writing goes far beyond what I usually write in the column of the month – I told you that your questions were very stimulating ! – I suggest that we continue on this subject next month, or at least shortly. If we are to believe the story of Noah, we have this origin which is common to all men following the flood. An origin to which science gives reason in its genetic observations, even if it is reluctant to adhere to its historical explanation. Our origins, our mentalities, our convictions, are therefore relatively recent influences, external to ourselves and ultimately very relative. Religions are only precursors, because our individual unity is in the relationship:

Relationship with the Father: “God is Spirit, and those who worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth”. John 4:24. Relationship to the Son: “And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son”. 1 John 5:11. Relationships made possible by the gift of the Spirit: “After these words Jesus breathed on them, and said to them, Receive the Holy Spirit”. John 20:22. “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” Matthew 28: 19.

 

What about the Essenes?

It was suggested that I take an interest in the Essenes. Can you tell me something about them? …I must admit that your question surprises me. The Essenes were a religious group at the time of Christ. They evolved parallel to the Pharisees and the Sadducees. They are also called Essene Therapists. “Essenianism was the only Jewish sect which did not expect the Messiah and which condemned the sacrifice, in which the Christians did not follow it”. Their existence was rediscovered when the Dead Sea Scrolls were found. They seem to have been wise people who sought an expression of pure faith in a life detached from the world. A few joined the resistance organized by the Zealots against the Roman occupier. The high site of Masada was the scene of a drama in the year 73, when the Romans took the citadel. Many of those who had taken refuge there chose to die with wife and children rather than surrender to the occupier and be reduced to slavery. The Masada site remains a symbol of Israeli resistance. In the meantime, I inquired and I discovered what I did not know: the existence of a church of Neo-Essenians present in Switzerland and in various countries. Their website is sufficiently informative and I was able to gather the information I needed: Here is what Gérard Petitbois, one of their pastors, says: "Essenian means: one who studies God, takes care of himself and do his will (his own will?). It is a movement that strives to transmit the wisdom of a higher world, much like an unbroken river. The origin of the Essenes goes back two thousand years, but the wisdom they claim is much older and is linked to the patriarch Enoch. The movement has expressed itself in different forms through the ages, such as the Cathars, the Rosicrucians and now the Neo-Essenians. (He did not mention the OTS, the Order of the Solar Temple, but all these movements have points in common. There is no doubt that the Rosicrucian sect is dangerous. Regarding the Cathars (the pure ones), those resistant to Catholicism who lived in the south of France, we do not know if their heresies were real or if they were exploited). There are, still according to Mr. Petitbois, several levels of experience. The first circle wants to be open, people come and take what they want, and leave when they want. And then, beyond the exoteric approach to things, there is for people who want to walk in this tradition, a very advanced teaching which engages them in an esoteric version of things, the one we call “the circle of the archangels”. During quarterly meetings, we will advance in this Essene tradition, and through rituals, through ceremonies, we will unite with an angel”… I stopped listening there because I didn't need to know more.

All the sects that claim to belong to Christianity have this thing in common : they have put Christ in the background to follow the revelations brought to a man by an angel. This is true of the Mohammedans with the angel Jebrail, of the Mormons with the angel Moroni who spoke to Joseph Smith, of the Catholics with the angel who appeared to little Bernadette Soubirou, and of those who later appeared to the children of Fatima. But in reality, all sectarian groups invoke a source of influence, or an interpretation, that is outside the Bible and the Holy Spirit. The apostle Paul says that Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. He warns us that even if an angel of God appeared to us to announce to us a different gospel from that which he announced, we should consider him as anathema, that is to say as cursed. This is a serious warning against an overly open and naive approach to spiritual things. Some people don't like the name Satan being mentioned, and I understand them. In reality, the angel's name is Lucifer, a word which means “who brings light, who gives clarity”. Lucifer was not always an evil being, but he became one by his choices. The new Essenes claim the wisdom of Enoch. However, the book of Enoch is very disputed because it gives us certain information on the angels which is disturbing as much for the Christian church as for the sects. Enoch mentions in particular the revolt of a whole group of angels. They decided to follow an archangel, their leader, by detaching themselves from the council of God to establish their own colony on earth. Enoch tells us about the different sciences that these angels then transmitted to men, and he also mentions these angels by their names. He also speaks of Christ, who at the end of time will come with his heavenly armies to imprison these unworthy angels and to repossess his world, which Jude also mentions, in Jude 1: 6.

 

Should we be open to syncretism, or should we rediscover diversity within Christianity?

All religions combined, the idea that many people, believers and non-believers, seem to pursue is that of a more fraternal and more equitable world, managed like a single state headed by a pyramidal organization. The pope's efforts go in this direction with his new motto : Fratelli Tutti. After centuries of religious wars, we should now make friends with everyone, especially those who are just waiting for the first opportunity to happily slaughter us. However, boredom was born one day from uniformity. So how do we preserve the particularities of humanity that make our world so beautiful and so interesting, while ensuring that our particularities are never a hindrance to others, but on the contrary constitute a richness and a complementarity? The answer is precisely in the twelve sons of Israel : twelve tribes, twelve entities which do not resemble each other but which, by coming together in a way which is not due to chance, will constitute the new Jerusalem, the city or the family of God. Those entities will however need to be purified from their obscure motives by the work of Christ, to form this construction skilfully orchestrated by God himself and of absolute beauty. In reality, each man has a hidden identity that he must receive as an inheritance from God, in order to be able to add his stone to the building. When put together, all these parts will constitute the face of God. The church – but the word has taken on such a connotation that I prefer another term : the body – is a spiritual work in which everyone occupies a very specific place, according to their innate attributions and those they have been able to develop. Expressing this role, unique among billions, must allow us to shine like a star in the firmament, to use the expression of Daniel 12: 3.  In Matthew 22, Jesus compares the Kingdom of God, as a dimension of spiritual life, to a king who sent to invite men to come and celebrate the wedding of his son.

“But, without worrying about the invitation, they went away, this one to his field, that one to his traffic; and the others seized the servants, insulted them, and killed them. The king was irritated; he sent his troops, slew those murderers, and burned their city. Then he said to his servants: The wedding is ready; but the guests were not worthy of it. So go to the crossroads, and call to the wedding all those you find”.

It is instructive to see how God views politicized religion, one that has ignored his calls, despised his prophets and killed his own son. This is why Jesus said that any sin they committed could be forgiven to men, but to keep despising the Holy Spirit would not be forgiven them, either in this life or in the one to come. The self-righteous get lost, but the humble understand, and they hasten to leave behind their gains and their certainties, to prepare for the feast of the great king ! Because even if he invites everyone to his son's wedding, the king still requires those who come to table with him to wear a beautiful festive dress !

 

A small voice then whispered to me: “It's because you were born with the need to travel, to explore, to relate, to report”. Photography would then be a pretext, just as some take a dog to justify their walks? It is true that these four words have pursued me throughout my life. I imagine that if you extrapolate them, they can give meaning to almost every existence. Oh, I tried the adventure, but the adventure brought me back to my starting point. There has always been this alternation: leaving and traveling, returning by obligation, getting married, moving, taking a new job, paying taxes, moving again, changing occupations, accompanying the children, facing life together or facing it alone. Each inclination to make room for us in the sun was followed by a phase of withdrawal and digestion, of inner exploration, to allow the words to come to the surface and give meaning to the adventure, and sometimes also to failure or loss. The journey we are on is an inner journey, and to pursue earthly goals for our own satisfaction would be to ignore what a human being is. I must constantly be careful not to give in to this confinement and that photography does not become an end in itself.

My heart is not proud, Lord, my eyes are not haughty; I do not concern myself with great matters or things too wonderful for me. But I have calmed and quieted myself, I am like a weaned child with its mother; like a weaned child I am content. Israel, put your hope in the Lord both now and forevermore. Psalm 131.

If your dreams seem unreachable, if your projects fail and fall apart, if you would like to do a lot of things but you don't have the means, tell yourself that it doesn't matter. Life is more than career, and today is better than tomorrow. We are well aware that many people have to content themselves with dreaming of a sandwich and a place to sleep. Jesus teaches us that this life is not Life. What I mean by this is that we must consider this ephemeral life characterized by the vagaries of our birth and our circumstances, not as an end in itself, but as an opportunity to prepare ourselves for the life that follows. “Delight in the Lord, and he will give you what your heart desires”, we read in the Psalms. Be reassured, I did not adhere to the principle, erroneous according to the Bible, of reincarnation. But you can look at it this way: If we put our personal ambitions on hold and make it a priority to cleave to God, to get to know him, to get to know our neighbor and to know ourselves, we we will thereby acquire a treasure which will have an eternal value. To follow Jesus is to agree to exchange what we will not be able to keep anyway, for what will constitute our eternal identity when God will resurrect us. Jesus tells us elsewhere that whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life because of him and the good news, will find it for eternity. (Mark 8:35). If we allow our ambitions to direct us, we will become our own little god, and we might be towards others like sorcerers and tyrants. But taming our dreams, by maintaining a safe distance from them taught by wisdom, this wisdom that the Bible teaches us, allows us to keep our sails in the wind. The important part is not the destination, even if there will be one, but it's the journey, it's the encounters, it's all those unforeseen events that happen during our travels and that teach us about life, about others, God, and ourselves. I wouldn't praise laziness, but man was created for rest.

 

 

When we understand that our dreams are simply gateways to the next step, we begin to live in the moment. An excerpt from a Woody Allen film was recently showed, in which the main actor challenges a spectator who came back, afternoon after noon, to see the same film again in a theatre. At one point the character comes out of the screen to take her by the hand and drag her with him into his film. We must allow Jesus to come out of the book, we must fall in love with him, we must let him drag us in his adventure. Only then can we say that we belong to him, and not to another. What is called the "Holy Spirit" is simply the spirit of Jesus which was magnified when Jesus returned to the Father. If you wonder what this Holy Spirit might be like, read the Gospels and see what Jesus is like, because he came to make us know about him. It is a spirit of strength, love and wisdom. He is holy, that is to say pure and supremely elevated above all that exists on earth, while being humble and servant. It is the Spirit that Jesus shares with the Father, and that he in turn wants to share with us. So if the Holy Spirit offered to you in your church makes you lose control, roll over and talk nonsense, ask yourself if Jesus would do such things. Ask yourself if Jesus would submit to the mass to be sacrificed again and again, if he would brutalize his wife and children, if he would reinstate the Sabbath or polygamy. Things suddenly become simple when viewed from this angle.

What image of man does the world send back to us? I had been asked for some photos and I was visiting a Christmas market ahead of the season. Beautiful stagings, pretty decorative objects and background music like in those sentimental films that are shown in this season seemed to delight the scattered visitors. Still, something felt wrong in my spirit and that feeling brought back something a friend had once told me a long time ago. This friend had arrived at the scene of a road accident. As he approached the wrecked car, he heard the radio continue to play cheerful, upbeat music. But he had a shock when he saw that the driver was very seriously injured, his face was torn off. Walking through this Christmas market with its painted baubles, its branchy and mossy dwarfs, its effeminate nutcrackers, its fathers and mothers-Christmas – parity obliges, but where has our good Saint Nicholas gone? – in red velvet in the midst of bears, reindeer and snowy owls – perhaps those of the mysanthrope Athena –, illuminated fir trees and garlands, with this heady music in the background, I suddenly felt a heaviness in my belly. I must have felt some of what this friend had taken when he was confronted to this faceless man.

We are approaching the feast of the nativity and I would have liked to pass on to you something more joyful and which inspires hope. You will see that it is all the same the subject of my Christmas message. But sometimes it's necessary to acknowledge the pain, and then provide real comfort and not just a glass of mulled wine. This injured man on the road is our humanity, it's us. Nobody seems to care and it's the normal order of things, since so many generations of faceless men have come and gone. That's why we invented Christmas, McDonalds, holidays. We set small pleasures to make up for the joy we lack. We cover ourselves with other faces so that life is less sad. We identify with improbable men and women, sometimes with angels, but more with demons in these times troubled by witches and death, or even with animals. Esoteric syncretism is our religion, but we call this openness and tolerance.

For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the greatness of his government and peace there will be no end. He will reign on David’s throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever. The zeal of the Lord Almighty will accomplish this. Isaiah 9.

Yeshayahu, whose name means “Yahweh saves” – announced the most significant event in human history to date. Our calendar is based on this event. Our Isaiah lived between the year 766 and the year 700 before the birth of Jesus, in a period marked by the relaxation of the mores of his fellow citizens and by the rise in power of an army of occupation: the Assyrians. Faced with this threat, God tries to breathe hope into this unlikely little people by reminding them of the promise he made to their fathers to place a just and strong king at their head, and by announcing to them the soon coming of this liberator.

Evil will not always rule the earth. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is the response given by God, creator of heaven and earth, to the ambient gloom of a world inhabited and governed by very imperfect men who are subjected to death. The gospel represents hope for future peace. But this peace will surprise those who passively await it. Passivity will disqualify them. A certain prophet used to say: "I am for peace, but as soon as I speak, they are for war". When I talk about the need for people to change something in their life, it stirs up war in the minds. People simply don't see the need to change anything and they strive to preserve the world in its current state. This is actually what the devil wants – the devil is scared to death of the change that is coming to the world. So he makes men happy. Money, sex and games. People will reap what they have sown, Jesus said. I am frightened when I see the recklessness with which young and old alike embrace anything and everything, just because it is trendy, casually identifying with this rebellion against God whose we know it will not last for long. An eternity in hell is a long time, and “especially at the end” as my father used to say. What we believe to be our opinion is actually dictated to us, much more than we imagine.

“Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you. Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour”. 1 Peter 5:6-8

“God is sovereign”. This sentence taken from the Calvinist vocabulary does not mean much, but like the Inscha'Allah of the Arab peoples, it serves to justify inaction. Even my dear, very Catholic mother, cannot contemplate the upheaval that is coming. Her sentence is: “Yes but you know, for God, a day is like a thousand years”. That's right, it's what the Bible says. But God has already granted us two thousand years of truce, so let's not ask too much. There is this passage in the Gospel that often goes unnoticed: “That same day some Pharisees came and said to Jesus: Go away, get out of here, for Herod wants to kill you. He answered them, Go, and say to this fox: Behold, I cast out demons and I do healings today and tomorrow, and on the third day I will have finished”. A mother, grandmother and great-grandmother can't bring herself to think of a deluge, and that's to her credit. Made aware of the judgment that was about to fall on Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham interceded for his nephew Lot to be spared. Lot was thus able to save his life as well as part of his family. But he could do nothing for the world he barely escaped. “You shouldn't tell them these things. We must give them hope because life is already complicated enough”. I don't know about you, but for me it's knowing the truth that sets me free. I would have liked, like everyone else, to live a good life, a long life, without worrying about anything but taking advantage of all the wonders that this earth offers. And then see my children and my grandchildren do the same. We will experience such an era of peace and prosperity, but not now. Lot's wife froze into a pillar of salt for getting too attached to her background and not being able to make sense of things at the critical moment. God enjoins us to look ahead.

All the stars in the sky will be dissolved and the heavens rolled up like a scroll; all the starry host will fall like withered leaves from the vine, like shriveled figs from the fig tree. Isaiah 34:4.

I watched as he opened the sixth seal. There was a great earthquake. The sun turned black like sackcloth made of goat hair, the whole moon turned blood red, and the stars in the sky fell to earth, as figs drop from a fig tree when shaken by a strong wind. The heavens receded like a scroll being rolled up, and every mountain and island was removed from its place. Then the kings of the earth, the princes, the generals, the rich, the mighty, and everyone else, both slave and free, hid in caves and among the rocks of the mountains. They called to the mountains and the rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb! For the great day of their wrath has come, and who can withstand it? ” Revelation 6:12-17.

The earth shall not be destroyed – at least not before another good thousand years, when it will eventually be replaced by a new earth and new heavens. But our world is going to have to shut down, in order to be reset. However, not the way those pulling the strings today planned. The current world has a bug, or a flaw if you prefer. It's going to get outright crazy and someone's going to have to pull the plug at some point. God will allow things to deteriorate irreversibly, because the wicked must disappear with their plans, insofar as they will not want to change. Peter, under whose authority the Catholics claim to be, says that the burning elements will dissolve with a crash. He may be referring to what will happen at the end of Jesus' thousand-year reign on earth, a reign that will begin shortly. This reign will end with the judgment of this world and that of all men who have lived, and will be followed by the arrival of a new earth and new heavens which will replace the present world. But what will reach our earth very soon will not only be war, but a series of cataclysmic events. They will come to the world following a bloody period marked by the outbreak of Jihad on a global scale. It is written that one of the plagues that will strike the earth will be pieces of stars that will fall from the sky. These asteroids will not destroy the earth, but they will make bitter, that is to say poisonous, a third of the fresh waters and a third of the seas. Perhaps what the prophet saw in vision was a deployment of nuclear or chemical weapons? Or fragments from a comet charged with toxic elements. In either case, our valiant environmental protectors will have a lot to worry about, especially since the disasters will follow one another and never stop. And it will only be at the height of these events, when all hope of survival has vanished from the hearts of men, that the unthinkable will happen. Jesus will return to save a remnant of humanity. Then everything will be placed under his authority and the earth can then be recreated according to the plan of a new Eden. The second part of chapter 65 of the Book of Isaiah describes this new earth. Yes I know, this is something difficult to conceive if you do not know the miraculous power of God, and it will be even more so for those who will see the state in which the wicked men will have left our earth. But rest assured: this recreation will not take millions of years. It will take place over a very short period and will mark the beginning of an era of peace and prosperity such as the earth has never known – I told you there would be good news at the end ! And another good news is that if you ask Jesus to fill you now with his Holy Spirit, then Jesus will take you to a safe haven, before the storm gets too violent, and he will bring you back with him when it is over. Isn't this yet another proof of his great love?

And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. Today in the town of David a Saviour has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.” Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favour rests.” Luke 2.

The event announced by Isaiah began with the birth of this child. It was followed by a period of about two thousand years of gestation, or “leaven fermentation in the dough” to use Jesus' expression – of evangelization if you prefer. It will find its fulfilment on the day of Christ's return in his glory, an event which our political world and many religious organizations seek to eclipse, but which is firmly awaited by some die-hard believers. These believers, however, will not see Christ return in glory since in reality they will accompany him. And in Revelation 2:27, it is written that they “will rule the nations with a rod of iron, as one breaks vessels of clay”. You must know that the tolerance for pride and wickedness and for the perversion of the qualities to which God is attached, will then be at a level close to zero. But that is something that the men who will have escaped the great trial that the devil will be allowed to subject the inhabitants of the earth, will wish, because they will have understood what are the intentions of the one who deceives the inhabitants of the earth, and then they will know who Jesus really is, the Son of God, “whose eyes are like a flame of fire, and whose feet are like burning brass”. Jesus, the saviour of the world, will then be their only bulwark against the destroyer.

You have set your glory in the heavens. Through the praise of children and infants you have established a stronghold against your enemies, to silence the foe and the avenger. Psalm 8

You now understand why Satan sought to kill this child at birth. When he learned that a king had been born, who was to become the Messiah of the Jews, Herod had all the children under two years old, from Bethlehem and the area, killed. But warned in a dream, his parents had taken Jesus to a safe place. A similar event had occurred at the birth of Moses. Even today, we can only be deeply indignant and bruised by the suffering that the devil inflicts on children all over the world. By threatening to kill what is most precious to him, Satan seeks to gain time by dissuading the Lord from intervening. He kills some and perverts others because he knows that children are God's secret weapon. Children have a natural trust and they are able to make extraordinary prayers of faith. "By the mouth of children and of those who are at the breast You founded your glory, to confuse your adversaries, To impose silence on the enemy and the vindictive". Psalm 8:2. I believe, but this is a personal view, that this star which had led the Magi and which had stopped just above the birthplace of Jesus, was in reality an asteroid by which Satan wanted to annihilate the plan of God for the redemption of the world. Mages are ambiguous characters. They are not prophets from God, but they are babylonian astrologers versed in esotericism. It is believed that they studied the writings of Daniel, who was among the exiles to Babylon and who had announced the coming of the liberator, 490 years earlier. Their mistake, when they saw fit to inform Herod of the coming of the Messiah, was at the origin of what is called: the massacre of the innocents. Today even more, innocent children are massacred by the millions because Satan knows that this generation will be the last before the return of Christ and that he will have to fight it. What he does not yet know, is that he will be overcome, and this through the cries of praise and victory of the unborn children who are in heaven. … I can easily conceive that barely born, Jesus, with his angels, had to stop and desintegrate this asteroid in its deadly trajectory. Satan remembered this well when he met Jesus in the wilderness : So, “If you are the Son of God...”. This however is a personal interpretation. But fortunately for us, Jesus never abused his power or his authority but he made himself obedient unto death, even that of the cross.

Josiah was eight years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem thirty-one years. His mother’s name was Jedidah daughter of Adaiah; she was from Bozkath. He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord and followed completely the ways of his father David, not turning aside to the right or to the left. … Neither before nor after Josiah was there a king like him who turned to the Lord as he did—with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his strength, in accordance with all the Law of Moses. 2 Kings 22-23.

When we read the genealogies in the Bible, we realize that God attaches great importance to showing the continuity of his plan through the generations. But the history of the people of Israel shows us an almost immutable pattern: "The king served the Queen of heaven and the Baal in the high places that his fathers had built, and the people did evil in the Lord eyes to anger him. As a result, God delivered them to their enemies”. From time to time, an event comes to relieve this distressing picture, for example, the life of Josiah. The young king decides to purify the country of everything related to false religion and to reinstate the Passover feast. Easter, or the feast of the Passover, "the feast of the passage from Egypt to the promised land", is the foreshadowing of what Christ will do for his people and for all humanity, when he will lead us from the kingdom from Satan to the reign of God, a reality that takes place on many levels.

When he makes a promise, God keeps his promise. He is not a man to lie, the Bible says. The origin of human beings is not limited to our birth. Not only does God describe the genealogy of the people who represent him, but he does not hesitate to give us certain details of their lives. If these may seem embarrassing, the miracle will only be greater. Sarah, for example, was clearly sterile and postmenopausal when she conceived Isaac at the respectable age of ninety. Through this miracle, God shows us that the salvation of men is a miracle and that in the end, man does not have much to do with it, but that it is enough for him to believe. Elsewhere, it is clearly explained that Jesus was born of an unknown father and was secretly adopted by Joseph. The account, however, reveals to us that the Holy Spirit of the Almighty "begat" this child. Mary was therefore made pregnant by a seed of unaltered origin. It is written that Joseph did not know her until she had given birth to a son, to whom he gave the name of Jesus. This means that the brothers of Jesus mentioned in the Gospels are probably the children she later had with Joseph. She herself was of the same nature as us, as the Gospels testify. If she was finally converted and received the baptism of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, she, like you and me, had to struggle with her natural inclinations. At one point, she even thought her son had gone mad, as did Jesus' brothers. Jesus wasn't crazy at all. But he wasn't a man like you and me. He was born with divine attributes which gave his life and his sacrifice a dimension and a universal value. The Jews knew that the Messiah they expected would be a figure of supernatural origins, as evidenced by this exchange some had about Jesus:

“Here he is, speaking publicly, and they are not saying a word to him. Have the authorities really concluded that he is the Messiah? But we know where this man is from; when the Messiah comes, no one will know where he is from.” John 7:26-27.

Jewish scholars believed that the Messiah would be a priest of heavenly origin. They likened him to a mysterious biblical character named Melchizedek, King of Salem, whose name means King of Righteousness. In Luke 20:41-44, Jesus agrees with them when he poses this riddle:

Then Jesus said to them, “Why is it said that the Messiah is the son of David? David himself declares in the Book of Psalms: “‘The Lord said to my Lord: “Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet. ”’a David calls him ‘Lord. ’ How then can he be his son? ”

Jesus invites us to ask ourselves the question and to find the answer. Who is he really for me? I looked up to Jesus as a model of wisdom, but he was simply an above average man. Until the day when Christ revealed himself to me in an extraordinary vision. Seeing him as he is, I felt faint, and from that day I know without a shadow of a doubt who Jesus really is. But for his contemporaries, Jesus was none other than the son of Miriam and Joseph, the carpenter of Nazareth, although some had doubts about the paternity of the latter. Now, according to Micah in chapter 5, the liberator would come out of Bethlehem. Jesus therefore seemed not to correspond to this messianic identity. But only at first glance because in reality he fulfilled all the criteria.

I have come in my Father’s name, and you do not accept me; but if someone else comes in his own name, you will accept him. How can you believe since you accept glory from one another but do not seek the glory that comes from the only God ? John 5:43-44.

In John 5, we read that, towards the end of his stay among them, Jesus reproaches his contemporaries for not having known to recognize who visited them in his person, having been sent to them by the Father. He already announces to them that another will come in his own name: the false christ, and that they will receive him. He also tells them, in Mark 6:4, "A prophet is not despised except in his own country, among his parents, and in his household." In John 9:39, Jesus says :

“For judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind.”

The blind joined the side of the road where Jesus was to pass, and Jesus healed them. But he was not limited to restoring their sight on a physical level. Many who seek the light of life have found it through him. Yet some have rejected the light that Jesus brought to the world. Surprisingly, it is those who occupy the seat of Moses in the church organization who are first targeted by his condemnation. There is something dreadful in collegiality when it is directed by the vanity of man. Because of their numbers and the intellectual foundations laid by their predecessors for generations, these people were convinced that they had an infallible understanding. To the point that God himself is a heretic when he comes to question their understanding. They become defensive and refuse to listen to what Jesus has to say to them. As soon as God begins to speak to them, they pick up stones to throw at him, thus condemning themselves to darkness. You know, Jesus is probably the most patient and tolerant being in regard to our weaknesses. Even the most sinister person can be instantly forgiven if they sincerely repent before Christ. But when we read the Gospels and a fortiori the Book of Revelation which describes the revelation of Jesus Christ which is imposed on the lost world in the end times, we are forced to perceive this saddened anger, still repressed but which at some point will be poured out on those who have despised him and who have rejected his offer to forgive us all, by giving his life for ours.

For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written: “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise;  the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.”  Where is the wise person? Where is the teacher of the law? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?  For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. 1 Corinthians 1:18-21.

Thus, God sends us a child to turn over our so-called wisdom and to bring things to his level. On this matter, I would not want to feed the confusion which reigns about Tammuz, the god of the rebirth of nature of the Babylonians who is represented in the arms of Semiramis and who inspired the painting of the Virgin and child but even before that, the Egyptian goddess Isis, holding her son Horus on her lap. These myths stemming from a religion considered counterfeit and diabolical by the Bible have altered the perception that many people have of what they call, the holy family, which led them to perpetuate a tradition and ancient rites loaded with curse, such as devotion to the Virgin, the "passion", which the Bible mentions as the mourning of Tammuz, or Ash Wednesday and the Feast of the Dead. Jesus is not at all on same level with this pagan mythology. “You are badly mistaken! God is not the God of the dead, but of the living”, he will say. True, he was born of a woman. A woman who, however, had nothing special except that she was probably a descendant of King David, as was her husband Joseph. But Jesus is not a creature. He is not the son of the sun but he is the son of God, God the creator of the sun, the heaven and the earth. He himself created everything with his Father. Jesus is destined to be the new Adam on earth, thus becoming the spiritual father of a multitude of those whom he leads out of their slavery to sin, towards the glory of the Sons of God.

All you need to say is simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything beyond this comes from the evil one.  
Matthew 5:37.

Through this child, God reverses the wisdom of the wise and intelligent. The religious tend to complicate things and bury them under a jumble of rites and traditions. It is their way of not obeying what God asks of all of us. Jesus says that they close men's access to the Kingdom of God, and that they themselves do not enter it. Jesus makes the things of God simple and accessible to all. Like a child, Jesus refuses the vain speeches and verbal sparring of theologians. When they endlessly argue about how to keep the Sabbath, Jesus heals an afflicted woman on the Sabbath, to show that rest is only good if shared by all. He will also show that he himself is the personification of the rites and festivals prefigured in the Jewish faith. He is the Passover, he is the Sabbath, he is the temple.

People were bringing little children to Jesus for him to place his hands on them, but the disciples rebuked them.

Jesus was also a friend of children. When my boys were little, I used to tell them in the evening, tucking them in, a story taken from an illustrated book on the life of Jesus. These moments of bonding, and the wisdom we could draw from these stories, were very precious things. Seeing the deculturation and occultation of our society and children, I realize how lucky we were to be able to lay this background. Even if they have not personally adhered to this faith when entering their adult life, they will know where the truth lies when they feel the need to seize it “head on”. Because that is what Jesus invites us to do. “So far, the Kingdom of God has been forced and it is the violent who take it, he says”. Jesus does not want us to be inhibited, fearful, subjected to religious dictatorship or timid.

When Jesus saw this, he was indignant. He said to them, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. Truly I tell you, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it. ” Mark 10:13-15.

In this text, we are told that the children wanted to be carried by Jesus, and that he himself wanted to embrace them. Our translations have carefully used the words “place his hands on them”. But if we go back to the original text, the Greek word “Haptomai” means to embrace, to adhere to, to cling to. It comes from the root word “Hapto” which means : to set fire to a thing, to light a fire or a lamp. Haptomai is also used for the “loving embrace” of a couple in love. What a telling illustration of this intimate and fiery relationship that our God wishes to have with man, in which he will be able to communicate his own nature to us. What is Jesus suggesting when he says that we should learn from children? Other allusions to children have an important place in the Bible: In Luke 10:21 we read:

“At that very moment Jesus was thrilled with joy by the Holy Spirit, and he said: I praise you, Father, Lord of the heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and prudent, and have revealed them to children. Yes, Father, I praise you for wanting it this way».

Jesus was probably talking about this relationship full of love that the Heavenly Father wants to have with his children on earth. I imagine Jesus, constantly grieved by the hard hearts of religious people toward their less educated fellow citizens, and weeping and laughing at the same time while realizing these things.

You will nurse from her breast and be carried at her side; you will play on her knees. As a mother consoles a child, so I will console you, and you will be consoled over Jerusalem. ” When you see this, you will be happy, and you will be revived.   Isaiah 66:12-14.

We say sometimes that what characterizes a child is the simplicity of the reasoning, or when the intelligence must be muted so that we can accept a preposterous thing. Or we think of naive purity. I doubt that any child is really simple or pure in this world. But what characterizes the child is first of all, enthusiasm, and there is nothing sadder than a sad child. Have you ever been grabbed by a toddler who wouldn't let go? The child binds quite naturally to what for him represents the quintessence of disinterested love and the expression of his own future identity. Watch how confident a toddler is when he suckles his mother's breast. We must draw the love we need to develop and grow, from “Jerusalem”, God's human family, and from God himself who stands in the midst of it. But every child has been rebuffed, disappointed or even deceived in their expectations by a two-faced adult. Being a parent is a difficult role, while we are caught between children who are like sponges, and a violent and decultured society, being ourselves weakened. … Jesus warned us of what would be done to those who scandalize one of those little ones who believe in him… “See that you do not despise one of these little ones. For I tell you that their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father in heaven”. Matthew 18:10. But let's continue.

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart. Hebrews 12.

The child is enterprising and daring. And it's not because he has a high esteem for himself, but it's because he still sees what others no longer see or refuse to see. He ignores depreciators, even if he suffers from their rejection. He is bold because he knows within himself that God carries him towards achievements, and that these will open the way and lead the world towards good and useful things, which will benefit everyone. A very current illustration of this spirit could be the career of Elon Musk. Sometimes all it takes is a good or bad word to decide the future direction of a child, whatever his age. “Let no one despise your youth; but be a model for the faithful, in word, in conduct, in charity, in faith, in purity”. 1Timothy 4:12. Even if their objectives are not at the same level, I am sure that Jesus has a lot of sympathy for this man who, through his faith in the good in man, wants to be a catalyst for progress.

In 1 John 3, John tells us : See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.

Do we only believe that we will one day be like God? To be somewhat like Jesus would already be a great challenge. Yet that is what John promises us, and we have nothing special to accomplish, except to keep ourselves pure and available so that he can take us in his arms. God will then transform us into his image, when the time has come for him to reveal himself to us as he is. “Haptomai”.   But beware of the arms of Semiramis, the mother of the lunatics and enemies of the God of Israel – we must not ignore the forbidden alliances that have always been woven under the instigation of Satan between religions, old and new. Beware of the “Kingdom Now” movement, for His Kingdom is not made up of the things of this present world and it will not arise spontaneously. Let us be satisfied with nothing less than a heart to heart with the Creator of our universe, the salvation that is in the new ark which is faith in the work of Christ, and the open arms of our beloved Eternal Father and of his Son, to whom belongs the government – may they be praised forever.

In that day you will ask in my name. I am not saying that I will ask the Father on your behalf. No, the Father himself loves you because you have loved me and have believed that I came from God.   John 16:26-27.

What a discovery ! There are several ways to read and understand this sentence. Can we believe that God, the Father, the Creator of heaven and earth, loves us? That He Himself loves us? That he loves YOU? That he loves you to the point of listening and responding even before you have expressed your desires ? Because he created us so that we have with him this relationship, this complicity, and he now wishes to work with us by supporting our actions with his miraculous presence ! This is what I think I can understand by reading this passage, in which Jesus promises us nothing less than to live in the presence of absolute love, for eternity.

God – 'Elohiym, literally: “the Almighty”, plural – knew that because the man and the woman were made in their image, being now invested with their Spirit, they would yearn for a dimension of relationship that they had not been able to consider before. A dimension that only the company of a real counterpart or a soul mate evolving in this same dimension would allow them to reach. Maybe another time, I'll tell you what I think I know about the soul mates mystery. For God now introduces a new word for the human male: Ish, and the derivative word Ishah for the creature that has been taken from his side, or we might say, from his dream. Later, the name Adam also pointed to this first man mentioned in the genealogy, who himself gave his wife the name Chavvah, after she had given birth to “a living being”, Chavvah which means “breath of life” as suggests the pronunciation of the “H”, and which was translated by Eve. I learned recently, through the excellent teachings on the Book of Genesis given by Allen Nolan which I linked to last month, that when a Hebrew name includes a pronounced “H”, as in Elohiym, in Ish and Ishah, in Abraham and in Sarah – the newer names that God gave at some point to Abram and Sarai –, or in Israel composed of the roots Sarah and El – the name given by God to Jacob and which signifies: who struggles with God, or prince of God –, it means that God brings into the life of this person this element which consists of his own divine breath, which now becomes part of the equation for the future of this person. But for now, let's try to consider what it means to have a communion, and think of the model from which God was inspired to transpose it into man. To have the beginning of an answer, we need to be interested in God himself, since we are supposed to have been created in his image. How does God experience relationships in his heaven?

When you read the Bible, you quickly understand that the God who revealed himself to Abraham is not at all the god that the Greeks and the Romans conceived. He is not like the dumb gods of the Babylonians and even less like the Odin and Thor of the Nordic peoples. God is not a dominating autocrat, alone in his heaven, to make arbitrary decisions concerning us, and woe to anyone who would draw his attention. In reality, no one has ever seen God, but Jesus made him known to us as the Gospels report. Jesus teaches us that God is gentle and humble in heart, that he has feelings, that we can speak with him as with a man, provided that we show him the respect due to a Father who moreover is a father in his perfection. And as Jesus surrounded himself with disciples, God is surrounded by a council. This council is constituted of angels as well as of other angelic creatures, of the Son, and of the spirits of the righteous who have come to perfection, we are told in Hebrews 12. Of all these beings, Jesus, or Lesous in the Greek gospels, – Yehowshuwa in Hebrew, which means “The Lord of hosts is salvation” –, is mentioned as the firstborn of creation. The term does not, however, refer to a chronological order, but rather to a preeminent position. He was the son of God long before he was incarnated in a man's body, and this is what gives meaning to his virgin birth. Jesus is presented to us, in the Gospel of John, as the Creator Word and as the Light of the world. Not only did God make him participate in his creation, but the Bible says, at the beginning of the Gospel of John, that all things were made by him, and that nothing that was made was made without him. Furthermore, Hebrews 1 teaches us that everything is meant for him. God had even decided, before any man existed, that one day his son would be the mediator of a new covenant, and that he would redeem us by dying for our sins. This tells of the prescience and the perfection of God's plan. If you did not know it already, know that you were created by Jesus and for him, and that your existence in the mind of God goes back to long before your conception. This is also why Jesus returns to this world: to take charge of what is rightfully his. The Bible teaches us that the original creation was tainted. It was taken over by angelic creatures who denatured it. If you don't like this world as it is and if you don't love yourself completely, know that the thing is understood and that it finds an explanation. Soon, a happy ending should satisfy and even rejoice you with the return of the earth to its original owner. For the days of the usurping gods are now numbered and the renewing of the whole creation to its original form is also included in Christ's work of redemption. (See my October column).

The Father therefore, keeps a communion with his son, that is to say, a relationship at all times. It is precisely this type of relationship, totally independent of the notion of sexuality, that man and his wife are meant to experiment in this new creation. Man, united to his wife by the Creator Word, living themselves in communion with the Spirit of God, are the three-stranded rope of Ecclesiastes 4:12. This union is so strong that it would be very difficult to break it. It constitutes the fundamental cell of a human society that God has destined to reconquer the world and the universe. If we speak of conquest, it is because there is a struggle. Indeed, the created world has a dark side and the Bible teaches us that this opposition is made up of celestial entities who rebelled against God – a group of angels who have abandoned their mission and their primary identity and the men who followed them. The origin of this evil is not explained, but it clearly pre-dates the creation of Eden and the formation of the first “men in the image of God”. The world in which we live is thus burdened with litigation. We can however imagine that God knew exactly what he was doing when he created this couple of three, still very innocent in their bubble of Edenic protection, in the midst of a universe monopolized by rebellious forces. Yes, God did create Adam and Eve, having in view for them the reconquest of our world. He did this, knowing that they would inevitably stumble, but in order to introduce the notion of an eternal redemption that would be required for them in order to carry out their mission and to live eternally in the presence of a holy God. Thus, God will be able to demonstrate his strength and his fidelity, through our human weakness which will no longer constitute either an impediment or a valid reason for indictment on the part of our enemy.

This is the reason why, as soon as this new creation was established, the rebellious son wanted to attack this couple – an unworthy son, survivor of a primordial world erased by a first deluge, because there would have been in reality at least two deluges or cataclysms and two restarts, some theologians argue, the dinosaurs having already disappeared following the first one. This son, rejected because of his pride and rebellion and now sick with jealousy, had well understood that his own eviction would be inscribed in this redemptive relationship. By suggesting, “Did God really say?” then saying: “Not at all, you will not die! But God knows that the day you eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, your eyes will be opened and you will be like him, gods capable of discernment and self-determination”, his stratagem consisted of discrediting God's motives regarding them. It all started with this seed of betrayal, now buried deep in our collective unconscious. The offensive was so successful that when they very quickly realized that they had been possessed by the one who was hiding in the serpent, the man and the woman, instead of returning to God with confidence, became afraid of him and they wanted to hide and stay away. Then faced with their act of betrayal, they looked for a scapegoat. The woman accused the serpent, and of course the man accused his wife before directing his rebuke at God himself. “This woman you gave me, she was the one who offered me to eat the forbidden fruit…”. Since that day, the sacred union has been destroyed and there is mistrust between the partners who have become mere protagonists. No one can trust anyone in this world. Satan has actually been very successful in his business of dividing so he can continue to rule. His victory is due to the confusion he was able to put in our minds. To illustrate this, someone said to me recently, following a family ordeal: "In any case, the good Lord will have well punished and humiliated us." It's a statement that made me jump, because it emanates from a way of conceiving things that is the result of the dissimulation of the acts of the devil and his ability to accuse God in his place. Of course there will be foreseeable consequences if we put our hands in the fire, but it is the devil who wishes us harm and it is never our Heavenly Father. In the book of Job, after Satan had caused Job's family to suffer great misfortunes, precisely because of his integrity, we hear appalling words coming from the mouth of his own wife, when she said to her husband: “Now curse God and die”. If you don't understand how global politics is controlled, take a cue from this explanation. The devil wages a guerrilla war against God by forcing men as far as possible to accept his own government through terror and violence. He kills people to then accuse God of being responsible for the massacres. He has set up a whole network of beliefs that allow him to maintain this hold, such as this belief in protective entities to which one must sacrifice, a system from which the mafias of the world are inspired. Another web of integration to his anti-God doctrine is grounded in evolutionism, which ousts God completely and justifies the law of the fittest. Jesus said, and we can believe him, that Satan was a murderer from the beginning, and that he does not stand in the truth, because he is the father of lies and there is no truth in him. But let's come back to the theme of the loneliness of the being, and above all, to the solution provided by God to remedy it.

When they disobeyed God at the instigation of the serpent and ate the fruit of the tree which was forbidden to them, it is written that their eyes were opened and they knew that they were naked. Letting the Bible explain the Bible, one can understand that this feeling of nakedness was actually a new form of loneliness. They felt for the first time the fact of being abandoned by the breath of God. This is how death had entered into their being. In Psalm 91 it says: “He will cover you with his feathers, And you will find refuge under his wings; His fidelity is a shield and a breastplate”. Having lost the certainty of this power, since God cannot coexist with sin, their first instinct was to make loincloths with fig leaves. Clothes give us an identity. And not just clothing, but really anything we surround ourselves with that isn't just necessary for our survival. Fig leaves speak to us of deciduous and ephemeral associations. Why are young people who are deprived of a Christian culture drawn into fashions like rock, punk, gore or goth to talk about my time, and now into tweaked sexual identities and trends that are resurgences of exotic forms of paganism? And not just young people. Money, cars, jewellery, philosophies, sports, luxury travel and hotels, festivals, music, food, tattoos, dogs for some or other animals, you name it. I even wonder about the nature of artistic expression, and about what drives me personally to want to produce these landscape photographs. Wouldn't this also be a way of responding to the loneliness of being or an attempt to cover up a certain nudity? Towards whom or what have we taken the habit of running for refuge when we feel this loneliness of the soul? Very often, our spouses, parents, friends or doctors fulfil a role that goes beyond their attributions, which causes their exhaustion and our frustration. But we could talk about our medicines and other drugs, our refrigerators, TV sets, smartphones, dating sites and even our dog. So, of course we have to share with others what in us is worthwhile. But to fill us, we have access to a source of life. And by systematically turning to substitutes instead of taking refuge first in the arms of our heavenly Father, we affirm our state of spiritual orphans and we deprive ourselves of some wonderful experiences that would have marked our lives. For instance when we feel some early symptom of sickness. Expressed trust in our God can allow us to overcome and not fall into the snare of some sickness suggested by our enemy. Then we can take lifestyle measures to restore our health. Our inheritance in God also includes the healing of our diseases. But let's not underestimate the nature of combat either. We still need a doctor or sometimes a psychologist, preferably a Christian, if we are spiritually weak, knowing that healing comes from God. “I bandaged him, but God healed him,” said Ambroise Paré, the father of modern surgery. The same attitude applies to any destabilizing situation that we encounter, because God can carry us through these situations if we trust him. Later, God made clothes for Adam and Eve out of animal skins. They were now exposed to much more adverse living conditions outside of Eden, and dead animals also foreshadow the notion of sacrificing innocent lives to cover their sins and preserve their lives.

As a result of their separation from him, God said to the woman, in Genesis 3:16: “Your desires will go towards your man, but man will dominate over you”. In other words, this imperative need that is now inscribed in you, will push you to seek relational fulfilment in your relationship with your spouse. But unable to respond appropriately to lift you up, you will have by your side a man limited to his animal dimension who can only dominate you. This single sentence contains the explanation for so much hardship on earth. Millions, not to say billions of women, are looking for emancipation, freedom, and men who are more attentive to them and more tender, but also stronger. But how could men become what women expect if these men are not emancipated themselves, and if they are not born again? Much violence surges among men because of the frustration that is provoked by this permanent confrontation with their spiritual condition of sons of Adam. In the Bible, God tells those who are not lucky enough to live in their promised land, that they must pray for the happiness of the country in which they are deported because their own happiness will depend on its happiness. God asks women to let go of their excessive demands, their quarrels, their bigotry and religious fables, and to pray that this transformation takes place in an extraordinary way within their marriage. Our only hope of ever seeing the light lies in a society more imbued with the spirit of God through knowing his word and doing what is his will. A struggle that must be even more vigorous in these times of abandonment of Christian values. Knowing and putting into practice the Bible is the only way to crush the head of the serpent, which is the organ that speaks, bites and injects the venom of betrayal, unfortunately even through religion.

The book of the prophet Ezekiel has an aspect that personally moves me. In chapter 16, God speaks there of a child. But not from a cute, loved, expected and pampered child. No, this child was thrown into the fields at birth so that the beasts would devour him. But God picked him up and covered him with his own mantle. He washed him from his blood and nourished him. Growing up under his affectionate gaze and under his protection, the child has become a young woman of great beauty. God took great care of her, adorning her with gold and the finest garments. When she had reached marriageable age, she was noticed by all the men. Quickly forgetting the benefactor madly in love with her to whom she owed her existence – keep in mind that for God, time does not exist – she placed her trust in her own beauty, offering herself to all who made her their propositions. She gave them the ornaments she had received and then she even sacrificed the children that God had given her on the altar of Moloch... Ezekiel speaks in these terms of God's love troubles with his betrothed: Jerusalem. The story extends, of course, to our western Christian society which God in turn uprooted from the mire of paganism to endow it with a remarkable culture and prosperity, and which then, at the time when it could have recognized where all these good things came from and choose to become the betrothed of her redeemer, has tarnished her identity by giving herself with presents to all those foreign gods who are not God but who were willing to take her.

The fable of this princess ignorant of her royal status from the book of Ezekiel is also the story of all of us. It's a pathetic story, but it still has a wonderful side. For even after she acted recklessly and humiliated her creator, God did not get tired of her. He still draws her onto him, and he even proposes to erase her mistakes and have an extraordinary life and destiny with her, if only she consents. And if the story of Ezekiel weren't enough to convince us that God never tires of loving the wonderful creatures he designed, the Bible also tells the story of Gomer. God had asked the prophet Hosea, a modest and honest man, to marry this very beautiful woman for whom the word fidelity rhymed with frivolity and money, and with a good situation. There again, we can discover and know the heart of Jesus with regard to those who, attracted by some mirage, have gone in the wrong direction, bringing hurt and undergoing a foreseeable return of things. We are definitely creatures that are both simple when it comes to attracting us to take us, and very complex when it comes to God taking us back. But, and I'm going to end with that because it's a great hope, we must also know that this confusing nature in which we live, will not always remain our clothing. Jesus promised that he would clothe us with a robe of fine linen, a new and pure nature, ample and comfortable, in which all the old things will have disappeared and until their memory. There will remain only gratitude, and the jubilation of being free in the Spirit of God. And in the event that we may still be tempted to recall the reckless acts of our past and feel some shame, Jesus will have kept on his dislocated wrists, the mark of the nails, to remind us that we are forever, forgiven and redeemed.

Far from being an incoherent jumble of fables, the Book of Genesis is in reality an enigma, a compendium of truths presented in a sometimes allegorical and poetic form. This book is in a way, a photograph of the state of the world. A scientific presentation would have been addressed to scientists and a religious work to religious people. But a snapshot can "speak" to many people, as evidenced by this craze for short videos that proliferate on the internet. It is still necessary to know how to decipher a photograph without being deceived, and this can require a spirit of investigation. You know how scientific minds are, I mean those who call themselves professors or doctors and who will do everything to assert their eminence. I sometimes participate in a discussion forum on photography which is a derivative passion. It's fun to see some trends emerging among the participants. There are those who formulate their quests or requests intuitively and sometimes poetically. And there are those who answer questions in a Cartesian and scientific way. The former are happy to have been able to perceive the possibility of an unexplored path to be debated, the latter make it their duty to bring what they consider to be the ramblings of uninformed minds, to the rules of “a + b”. The same goes for theology and theologians. The Book of Genesis is the subject of debate par excellence. In photography as in painting, it is possible to describe the rules which, if applied, will allow a visual expression to correspond to the accepted and generally acquired criteria of harmony. We can also dissect the physical laws of optics and the more subjective ones of format and composition. In addition, there is all this chemical aspect which makes it possible to capture and reproduce this vision resulting from a combination of photons and electrons, nowadays recorded in computerized form by an electro-mechanical process. Computers make it possible to reproduce all the information relating to an image identically and theoretically for an infinite number of times. But by virtue of the second law of thermodynamics which stipulates that anything that transforms with heat production leads to irreversible decay, the computer components age, and the process becomes error-prone. Man had to accept at some point the idea of ​​the mortality of the universe and that of the limits of energy resources. This law was not the origin of the world, but now it accompanies the law of sin and death. The only thing that endures forever and without variation, is the word of God. It is by it it the original world was created, it is by it that it was subjected to vanity and decay because of sin, and it is by it that it will one day be restored to its foundations, as initially.

As for beauty and the emotion it provides, these are much more elusive things. It is also said that they are in the eye of the beholder who contemplates the work or the creation. But why do we photograph? I would say, basically for two things: to show, and to remember. - Oh no, please don't show this photo! Oh, but why? Look how cute we are: me with my round face and you sucking your big toe! I wish I had that litheness ! Then, you at 18 and me at 22. I wore long hair and you didn't need a bra. With our angel faces, we look like two young gods! Maturity only added to this seemingly idyllic picture, until around the age of thirty. Then things started to go the wrong way and didn't get better over time. Fortunately, we have a few photos left…

Scientists tell us it's the telomeres' fault. These control organs which end our genes seem to deteriorate irreparably over time and replications, a deterioration accentuated by pollution and poor lifestyle, and this phenomenon would be at the origin of ageing. But the Book of Genesis reveals that aging and death happened when man disobeyed. God was forced to take action at this time to prevent an alternate creation from developing alongside his own. Our rebellion forced him to put an expiration date on all animal and plant life. And as far as man created in his image is concerned, he did so by denying us access to the "tree of life". “He placed at the east of the Garden of Eden, the cherubim who wave a flaming sword, to forbid the way to the tree of life”. What does this element represented symbolically by a tree of life, consist of ? Originally, the world created by God was good and even almost perfect. All that was missing was the final touch that would be provided by the man and his companion. This original world assumed no aging and no degradation. In Hebrews 1 we are told that "God through his Son upholds all things with his mighty word." The Bible says elsewhere in speaking of the world: "By your word it was created, and by your will it exists". Taken in this context, the word takes on a meaning that no doubt partly escapes us, and we adhere to it “by faith”. Quantum physicists who study the harmonics of the universe may be more inclined to consider this notion. “The voice of the Lord is like many waters, like the roar of thunder”. “He sends his commands to the earth: His word runs with speed”. “As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it”. (Isaiah 55). In John's Gospel, Jesus is presented as the Verb or the word of God who dwelt bodily among us. What did Jesus do? He was sent to earth to give seed to the reapers, and then he returned to God. Although the world as a whole has not received it, this seed has increased. Jesus also compared this word to leaven which is mixed with flour and which makes all the dough rise. The world was undeniably shaped by the Gospel before it was set aside in favour of merely scientific or philosophical approaches.

An important part of our struggles arises from the notion of property. The Bible says that heaven belongs to God, but the earth was given to the sons of men. This may seem surprising and even contrary to our good Calvinist theology. But indeed, for God, what happens on earth is not his responsibility but is indeed the responsibility of man. Our misfortunes are therefore fully attributable to us, and here is the explanation. Understand that from heaven, God is still managing the supernatural aspect that controls the naturalness of the earth. But man had been put in charge of decisions to be made on earth, and this did not change after the fall. In Genesis 1 it is written, “God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him, male and female he created. God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the sky, and over every animal that moves on the earth”. God entrusted man with a turnkey land, a perfect Eden, saying to him: From now on it is your responsibility to maintain what I have built for you. You can keep this investment in the state and even grow it as you wish. I built this house by my word, and insofar as you cling to this same word, you will establish your own house. But the Bible tells us what happened next: The woman was tempted by seemingly emancipatory rhetoric, and the man was tempted in turn through the woman's affirmations. The evil serpent thus managed to place them under his domination. Both fed on a food that was forbidden to them because of their immaturity, and they had a nasty indigestion. But the first fault they committed was that of having transferred their trust to the snake. By gaining the trust of men at the expense of God, the serpent's plan was to make himself master of men and through them, of the kingdoms of the earth. Interestingly, the woman was not drawn to evil, but was tempted when she saw that the fruit was good and would open her mind. Due to their intuitive nature, many women are thus attracted by esotericism, by divination and by a false spirituality. When Satan came to tempt Jesus in the wilderness, he said to him, after having shown him all the kingdoms of the earth: “I will give you all this power and the glory of these kingdoms, for it has been given to me and I give it to whom I want”. Who gave him these kingdoms? It is certainly not God, but it is man. Jesus could have thought that this proposal made to him was a good offer and that by accepting it, he could then take advantage of it to announce his Gospel openly to all the nations of the world. But unlike many churches, organizations and Christian TV networks today, Jesus knows the difference between what looks like a good plan and what is right. He responds to Satan by quoting the Scriptures to him: “It is written: You shall worship the Lord your God and serve him alone”. Jesus' mission was precisely to challenge the legitimacy of this power, and ultimately to restore it to its true owners. And that is why Jesus said, “When you pray, say, 'Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be your name. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our bread (your word) for this day”. Because it must be said that, as clever as he is, the devil has little power in himself and the angels of God are very superior to him. But it was we men who gave him our power by doing his will. It is we who give him a legitimacy by pledging allegiance to him. Jesus invites us to do God's will on earth from now on. And Paul reminds us in his Epistle to the Galatians: “Make no mistake: God is not being mocked. What a man sows, he will also reap”.

Adam and Eve have now understood that there has been a transfer of power and they are in complete disarray. Each tries to throw the responsibility of the fault on the other, the man on the woman and the woman on the snake. The man shows an astonishing maturity when he insists on the fact that this woman, it is in fact God who gave her to him. The origin of man's cowardice goes back to those very ancient times. So, as a sad but not desperate father, God comes to console them all the same. He paints before this original couple the picture of what their existence will be like on earth, under this new government. He does not impose a punishment on them, but he explains to them calmly and with sadness, some of the consequences of the loss of the privileged relationship they had with him, and also, what the fact of having opened a channel by which an ill-intentioned spirit will now speak to them and lead them in their choices, will represent for future generations. These consequences are not long in coming. After he killed his brother Abel out of jealousy, God said to Cain: “Behold, sin lies down at your door, but you are ruler over it”. The mindset has completely changed. Instead of enjoying Eden in jubilant closeness to all creation, man will have to protect himself from it. The bulk of man's efforts will have to be directed towards measures for the preservation of his own existence. Creation is not the source of the problem, but it is now moving in the wrong direction. The supposed sons of God are led by Satan and the earth is cursed because of them. This is why the budgets allocated to defence are enormous, as are also those allocated to health, or ceded to agrochemicals. All of these things are necessary, but they are unproductive in themselves and they exist as a result of man's sin and its effects on earth. God reveals to man what is going to happen: "Now when you cultivate the ground, the earth will produce thorns and thistles." A more adequate translation of the word thistle, in Hebrew "dardar", would be: mutation. There will be a license for changes to take place. The model established by God will no longer prevail, but nature will evolve in an anarchic way through random mutations. And this is what happened soon after the fall, so that the current world is only a pale reflection of this original world. At first, there were no carnivorous animals. Man himself was a vegetarian. But again, by virtue of this second law of thermodynamics, the fruits on which he fed no longer appeared and man had to kill animals to survive. It is a sort of downward spiral towards a world that is less and less efficient and more and more cruel and dangerous for man. A world contaminated by bastard beings, part-angels part-men or animals, and which instead of flourishing, cannibalizes itself. This world is the exact opposite of what evolutionary theory asserts. It is in full regression and the methods of reinforcement developed by man using transhumanism and gene therapy, will not save us but they will only accelerate our corruption. It is this corruption that some already imagine exporting to other planets in the universe. That of creation accompanies us in parallel, with extreme climatic events, diseases, famine, limited resources causing conflicts between nations. Viruses and bacteria carried by humans and wild or domestic animals will become increasingly difficult to control.

Not very reassuring, this speech that God gives them to console them. And yet, after having spoken to them in all frankness, God tells them that he will send them help. He explains to them that the seed of the woman will crush the head of the ancient serpent. This promise will come true with the birth of Jesus, the Messiah of Israel, who himself will become the father of a multitude made up of all those who have believed in him. In the meantime, God said to his people through Moses: “Today I call heaven and earth to witness against you: I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Choose life, that you may live, you and your seed, to love the LORD your God, to obey his voice, and to cleave to him: for on this depend your life and the length of your days, and thus you will be able to dwell in the land which the Lord swore to give to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob”. (Deuteronomy 30:19-20). God had promised Abraham, who is the father of our faith, a land. This country would belong to him and to his descendants, on condition that his people stick to him and that he obeys what God would tell him. But then, if the earth is the heritage of man, and if the heaven is only a place of temporary accommodation because it is in reality reserved for God, what are we waiting for to claim our heritage and to snatch it from the hands of the enemy? This is what some Christians, Jews and Muslims, are trying to do, each with their own methods and for their own account. But things won't be that way. War and politics won't solve anything. Conquering those seven mountains which are the world's domains of influence, won't solve anything either. Our earth needs a miracle. As was the case in the days of Noah, it will have to – this is essential for a new beginning – be purified from all flesh corrupted not only genetically but also by sin. And that is precisely where we are now.

Jesus said to John, “Let the one who does wrong continue to do wrong; let the vile person continue to be vile; let the one who does right continue to do right; and let the holy person continue to be holy. Look, I am coming soon! My reward is with me, and I will give to each person according to what they have done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End. Blessed are those who wash their robes, that they may have the right to the tree of life and may go through the gates into the city. Outside are the dogs, those who practice magic arts, the sexually immoral, the murderers, the idolaters and everyone who loves and practices falsehood”. Revelation 22:11-14.

God had spoken to his people through Moses, and then he did so through his son Jesus. Moses had said: “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me, from your people, one of your countrymen : listen to him”. (Deut. 18:15). God's plan is moving forward and we must not remain fixed on the instructions of the past, but we would be misguided to believe that Jesus abolished the law that God taught us. Yet God swore by placing his bow pointed against the sky as a sign to men that never again would he resort to a deluge of water to destroy all life on earth. No, this time God will take us through a symbolic flood, and our natural death will do the rest. The waters of the flood are symbolized by baptism, a baptism in which we choose, each individually and voluntarily, to die to this world of which we were an integral part, then allowing God to fill us with a new identity by the breath of his Holy Spirit. This symbolic death and this pledge of an immortal life actually constitute our life insurance and the promise to go through death while remaining alive. In his epistle to the Colossians, Paul says that we are already resurrected as far as the spirit is concerned. As there was once Noah's ark, then the ark of the covenant by the law of Moses in another genre, Jesus is now the mediator of a new and more excellent covenant between God and men, explains the Bible. What is an arch and what is the idea behind the symbol? It would take a theologian several pages of writing to explain all aspects of this object and of its contents. So I will simply say that the ark corresponds to a "privileged space" over which God watches and whose content he preserves in a supernatural way. One of the aspects of the gospel of Jesus Christ is precisely this supernatural space of preservation, or this ark, which is prepared for us. “My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am”. (John 14-2-3).  “Whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses it because of me and this good news, will find it for eternity”. In other words, whoever seeks to spare his life by the means of this world, will perish with this world. “But whoever believes in me will live, even if he dies”. The new ark that will allow us to reach eternity is the Spirit of Jesus, the Holy Spirit, in which God will hide us and preserve us. “For just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son gives life to whom he is pleased to give it”. (John 5:21).

All men without exception die one day, in any case until the return of Jesus. But it may be that only those who are deemed worthy to participate in the new world, will be resurrected, at least initially. The big question then is: Who is worthy and who is not? Again, Jesus gives us answers. “I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you”. (John 15:15).  “The servant does not always stay in the house, but the son always stays there”. (John 8:35).   What distinguishes a servant or a friend, from a son? They are quite similar while they are young, the apostle Paul tells us. But a servant doesn't know what his master is doing and he just obeys, says Jesus. The son is in on the secret. He knows the Father. And as he grows, the Father delights in this son because he is doing his will. He gives his life for his sheep, while the mercenary sees the wolf coming and he flees, because he has nothing to do with the flock. “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get?” (Matthew 5:43-46).   “The son inherits everything”.  But how does one pass from the stage of servant or that of friend, to that of son? It's impossible. To be a son, one must be born in the house or in the family, and by the way, the status of son is not dependant on genre in the Bible. And that's where this awesome miracle comes in: We can be born again, Jesus tells us, and the promise is for everyone who believes without exception. But do we want it? Are we ready to die to our scientific or religious certainties, to our identity acquired through our efforts and merit, and to kneel before God asking him to forgive us for our frenzied individualism? In Isaiah 64:6, God says that our own justification based on our merits is in his eyes like a paw that would have served to wipe our private parts. Is this what we planned to present to him when we died? Do we want to be philosopher automatons, full of their own wisdom, or learned parrots spouting heard litanies? Or do we want to commune with the source of Life? Are we now ready to let go of our innate rebellion, and ask Him with tears to reveal to us the tender love of a Father, to cleanse us of our attraction for this filthy world, of its mentality and its false religion, and to welcome us into His own family ? Without this baptism and without the new birth, we already experience death, even though we are still alive. But once we are born of the Spirit of God and his word, we are alive for eternity, even though our shell will continue to deteriorate and eventually die. The important thing is not the body because what has been taken from the dust will have to return to the dust. If our spirits are bound to God in this kind of marriage to which Christ invites us, then God will endow us with a body in His time. And believe me, it's a safe bet that when we have seen the new model elaborated in heaven, we will not regret for a single second of eternity the old Adamic body that some spend a lot of time exalting in front of their mirror.

A frontal attack would be tricky. But you know this military and political formula: “If you can't stop them from progressing, then make sure that they get lost”. This strategy, the enemy has applied it successfully throughout the history of the world and of the church, where each desire for revival was very quickly recovered in favour of new doctrines, deviating from the biblical foundation. Thus were born the sectarian movements like Islam, Catholicism and Orthodoxism, and later the post reformation movements including the Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses and other Adventists. How do you recognize that a movement has deviated from its evangelical foundation? It is when individuals have lost this direct link with Christ through the Holy Spirit, and now deprived of this inner light, they turn to men and to religion to receive guidance and instructions. They are these blind people who direct other blind people of whom Jesus speaks, and who all move towards a pit. But what was Jesus thinking when he shared the parable of the tares sown by his adversary and now growing in his own field, among the good seed? Would there be a false Holy Spirit ? … A new movement was born a few years ago and its influence is currently sweeping through many of the Evangelical churches.

Born in the United States for its theology but actually in India for the spirits that support it, this movement also known as the Toronto blessing is spreading rapidly across the world and has even reached my conservative Switzerland. I personally know pastors and leaders of youth movements who are very appreciated as men of God, and who have nevertheless fallen into the trap. This tells you how real the seduction is. Two things make it easy to recognize this movement : It teaches a false theology based on the fact that Jesus would have appointed new apostles especially for this time, and that they would have received complementary revelations, a kind of addition to the Gospel. Their disciples, those who have gone through the “school of the supernatural” at Bethel Church in Reddings, California, or belong to the Vineyeard movement, and have been "activated” by receiving the “anointing”, also have very strange manners. They twitch or rock back and forth in their prayer and preaching. They are constrained and in pain. Their attitudes are reminiscent of the Orientals and more particularly the Hindus in the exercise of their religion. This theology is called NAR, for New Apostolic Reformation, and what they believe is the Holy Spirit, is actually the spirits of the Gurus and the Kundalini awakening of New Age. They teach a gospel called "Kingdom Now," which is not unlike the "Hippie" movement of the 1960s, striving to convert the world to a kind of modern social Christianity.

These are not coincidences because that's where it all started, when these idealists from all over the world, following the "flower children" of San Francisco who reacted against the militaristic society and the war in Vietnam, went to India and Nepal to seek spirituality in psychedelia and psychotropic drugs. The spirits they brought back with them then touched a fringe of the American evangelical world. It has since been forgotten where the spirits came from, and these sickly symptoms are attributed to a baptism in the Spirit of God, as in the first chapter of the book of Acts. But unlike the disciples who were filled with the Holy Spirit and with disinhibiting boldness on the day of Pentecost, the experience leads them to have demeaning and blasphemous attitudes, as this repentant pastor relates. These people are driven by a sweet idealism. They often start out as sincere, born-again Christians. They love the Lord and want his glory to be revealed to the world. They imagine that when much of the world is converted to their social gospel, then Jesus can be said to have returned to earth. They work to prepare the world for the return of Jesus. The approach is humanistic and it can be tempting. But this teaching is not in agreement with what the Scriptures say. Jesus promised us blessings if we follow his Spirit, but with the persecution of the world, a world that is condemned. He has also prepared a way out for us: “I am going to prepare a place for you, so that where I am you will also be there”. Satan had tempted Jesus in the wilderness. Wanting to avoid Jesus being sacrificed for our sins, he aspired to short-circuit God's plan by incorporating Jesus into his own government : "All this has been given to me, and I will give it to you if you bow down to my feet, you adore me. It is dangerous to seek so-called miraculous experience and power outside of Bible-compliant doctrine. Remember how Jesus severely rebuked Peter when he wanted to spare him the cross. “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns”. In reality, from the moral teaching that is bludgeoned, to the repetitive and hypnotic songs of praise which are ultimately not so different from those of the "Hare Krishna" that we saw jumping in the streets of Geneva at a time, everything is illusion and manipulation of people's minds. These unfortunate Christians are under the influence of demons. They look for various spiritual manifestations which they group together under the term "glory", which are without purpose but which are enough to convince people in search of sensations. If you read the Gospels, you know what Jesus said would happen to the tares. He said that the roots of those weeds sown in his field by an enemy are so inextricably mingled with those of the good grain that one could not uproot one without risking uprooting the other. He was going to let the tares grow among the good wheat, until harvest time. This explains the rise of this heresy in the churches that want to be at the forefront. But in the end, Jesus tells us, his angels will sort it out.

Peter also warns us in 2 Peter 2: “But there were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. They will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the sovereign Lord who purchased them back, bringing rapid destruction upon themselves. Many will follow their shameful ways and the way of truth will be slandered because of them”. And in 2 Corinthians 2, Paul also warns that “These men are false apostles, deceitful workers, disguised as apostles of Christ. And this is not surprising, since Satan himself disguises himself as an angel of light”. If you find yourself in a church influenced by the movement and by the music of Bethel – Vineyard, Jesus Culture, Hillsong, TobyMac, Bethel Music – and there are many of them, beware of this, inform yourself well and then try to warn your pastor and your friends. Be like the disciples of Berea: honest people who daily examine the Scriptures to find out if what you are taught is true.

“Jesus said to them, I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty”. (John 6:34). And that is where our salvation lies: not in a rite intentionally made obscure, not in collective emulation, but in a personal relationship with Christ supported by the study and the practice of his Word.

The most important is not to stop, ever, not to get discouraged and give up. The world seeks to do violence to us to make us the opposite of who we really are. If I had remained on the impression that religion had left on me, I would never have gone to meet Christ by reading the Bible. If I hadn't confronted the hard and cold heart inside me, I wouldn't have been able to meet my Lord and make room for him in my life. I even had to relearn how to cry at some point, which I probably hadn't done since I was six years old and my first day of school. Crying is the only sane reaction to some of the things we come across in life. Jesus cried sometimes in response to the hurt of people. He had preserved a tender heart.

We have an inner testimony that lets us know what is right and what is wrong. It's amazing how the world gets carried away where no one in their right mind would want to go. It only takes being told something long enough for a majority of people to believe it, or a bunch of merry-go-rounds redefining human relationships for their views and practices to become the norm. I recently stopped on a music channel for young people to try to understand what attracts them. Young people are looking for love, and this is not difficult to understand. Yet the images are difficult to bear, even for an old veteran. The young men are presented as princes, and the almost naked young girls are their possessions or their harem. Their bodies have become an altar to physical enjoyment. There is no respect, no more interest for the person of the other, no hope of being led towards the soul mate. Young people do not know that God is the architect of love. They ignore that the happiness they are looking for is in the fusion of two souls and that this fusion necessarily passes through the gift of self. Then, adorned with their pendants in the shape of a Christian cross, they offer themselves to the devil in a sensuality that would make the priests of pagan prostitution of the past blush. Jesus said that when a person, or a country, or a generation, who knew God, turns away from him, the condition or "possession" of that person or group of people becomes seven times worse than before they were set free by the Gospel. This is frightening, when you know that the Canaanites dedicated themselves to destruction and that their land was given to others, because they indulged in such practices. The gods of ancient Canaan were a satanic trinity made up of Baal – the possessors –, Ishtar – the enchantress – and Moloch – the destroyer. These spirits have returned and are poised to dominate America and the world that once was free. And Jesus said that the people who were once torn from their land for serving them, will be present at the judgment seat of God to judge us. For if they had had the witness of the Christian cross, they would have repented like the people of Nineveh at the preaching of Jonah. Jesus saves all who repent no matter what they may have done, but he can do nothing for those who despise his gift to us. And in a way, similar things happen in churches. Fusion is brought about, but with foreign gods. Humanity begins to dance indiscriminately to the sound of all that is novelty or emancipation. Like an encounter during a drunken evening, fashions are passing fancy from which one wakes up next to a stranger and with a headache that could last.

But people don't want to think beyond the present moment anymore. Oh it must be said that they received so much conflicting information… This image comes to me of a treadmill on which all human tragedy unfolds and which constantly pours its content of fools into a place of oblivion. Something like in the story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin who is leading all the rats in town to their doom, but who cheated in the salary he was promised, decides to take the children as well. Most people are unaware of the drama that is unfolding around their lives, because they don't know who they are nor what life is about, and because at their level, everything seems to go on as before. We are clumped together in a mass whose inertia reassures us and which hides the outcome from us. What remains of the history of men, of the experience of wars, of our ambitions, of our beliefs and certainties, of the conditional promises of the Bible both good or bad, of the things that our ancestors accomplished and of those maybe we will accomplish? A few inscriptions on stone and in books, an ephemeral epitaph, some photos on a digital medium that will soon evaporate... People don't know where the world is going, let alone where they're going, when they should perfectly know. Jesus said that in the final phase of the history of the world, the one in which we are already very involved, men will be obsessed: the quest for material security, hedonism, the want to party to counter the ambient gloom, the desire to set up a government that makes decisions in their place and for everyone, the desires to buy goods and sell their products, to marry and to marry their children. All of this would be legitimate if they were not doing it for the very purpose of perpetuating in its present form the existence of a sick and sickening world. This blind progression is leading our world towards great misfortunes, because every inch that we give in to evil by doing nothing will make us reap some rewards, and this at any level.

 

Back to the million dollars question: Who am I, where do I come from and where am I supposed to go?

You may know that I recently experienced a personal tragedy with the loss of my friend. A remarkable person met in a providential way, no doubt at a critical time when I had to prove something to myself.

Different from each other and united by childlike hearts and a same desire to survive the trials of life, we quickly became inseparable friends. A friendship constantly disputed by her illness. More and more young people are indeed suffering from parkinsonism, this depletion of the dopamine necessary for movement. Part of the brain dies, probably from a poisoning, and as a result, paralysis sets in. And too often, instead of seeking to depollute patients at an early stage and directing them towards healthy lifestyles, practitioners engage them from the outset in a dreadful spiral of dopaminergic drugs which, after having relieved them for a few years, will accelerate their decline.

We had our moments of happiness, especially our daily walks during which Liliana enjoyed posing for me as much as I enjoyed photographing her. Small things gave her the opportunity to stage herself in a very spontaneous way. Although naturally shy, Liliana had had great ambitions as a child, having even wanted to become president of Colombia to, as she said, restore order to this chaos. She revised her ambitions and eventually studied food engineering, specializing in the vineyard and wine, which she was passionate about. Too many heartbreaks, some relationship failures, and finally this dreadful disease, had left her in dismay with some great frustrations.

Revealing some of the creativity that lay dormant in her helped rebuild herself and regain some self-esteem. Christian faith was central to our relationship. We had hopes for a physical healing. We could not reach it, but that did not prevent our inner journey towards a healing of the soul. The Parkinson's disease had progressed and her last years were more difficult. She now lived surrounded by home care. She died in February. She would have been fifty-five during this month of August.

Losing the warmth of her presence was painful, but losing her in her identity was going to be too. Lawyers had abused her situation during a difficult divorce – she was ready to do anything to keep her children. Some hefty bills for emergency interventions caused by her illness added to this debt. Now destitute, justice had placed her under the guardianship of the state. We were able to obtain assistance from social insurance which enabled her to live relatively independently for several years. But that evening last February, her assistant called me, panicked, to tell me that Liliana wasn't breathing. Living nearby, I intervened very quickly and the rescuers took over from us. After an hour of resuscitation attempts, we had to face the facts. And it's true that she had earned her rest. From a long time, debilitating dyskinesias caused by otherwise essential drugs made her life miserable. Her back had been dislocated and these fits were exhausting. Her courage in facing this condition for so many years had surprised many. The otherwise very understanding police officers had her taken in for an autopsy. They then took the keys of the apartment, asking us to leave without taking anything – it's the procedure. I had been her close friend for more than twelve years and also her curator in charge of maintaining her at home. But with her passing, my role was terminated and for justice, I wasn't anyone. Her body had been lent to us for burial, but for the rest, her heritage, her clothing, our common items and memories, her very identity, all of this would be sent to a bankruptcy office for its “liquidation”. We were still allowed, her children and me, to take the pictures and the Bibles. Liliana had been a believer from childhood and Jesus was her first love. When she was going through some especially difficult time, she would sometimes say to me: “Ah, Paul, you don't know how much I want to be with Jesus so that I could snuggle up to him”. Even if she hadn't always been very wise, she had retained a great sincerity from childhood. She knew that if this world had taken everything, she still had the main thing, something no one could take away from her : her place in the heart of God.

Even as I write this August column, the Arte channel is showing the film: “The Man Who Saved the World” (by doing nothing). This film based on real events alternates between past and present. In 1983, in the midst of the Cold War, the world came close to a nuclear holocaust when computers on Russian defence satellites detected five US missiles heading towards Moscow. Protocol would have required a return fire to be engaged before the missiles even reached their targets. What prevented Colonel Stanislas Petrov from applying the protocol was the case of conscience of the millions of deaths that his decision was going to cause, but also the trusting love that inhabited him. Good on him because it turned out that these missiles did not exist ! To date, the computer failure has not been elucidated. But the man was dispraised by his superiors and the Soviets covered up the affair. Nobody knew there as elsewhere, what could have happened to the world and that the wise decision of a man allowed us to avoid. A few years later, his beloved wife died of a serious illness and the man sank into sadness and a miserable life. The waters of torment are bitter for those who have not found the source of life. In the years that followed, he became a nobody. However, recently some journalists have taken an interest in his story. People are looking for heroes to identify with, and this man is certainly a good example. Unfortunately, most of the heroes young people follow today come from a world of fantasy and darkness, and are endowed with powers that are as evil as they are illusory. I don't read a lot but a friend once pointed me to this quote from James Lee Burke: ‘The real gladiators of the world are so humble in their origins and unremarkable in appearance that when we stand next to them in a grocery-store line, we never guess how brightly their souls can burn in the dark.’ The hero's heart reappears at the end of the film, when the man shows up at his mother's doorstep, whom he hadn't wanted to see for many years, clutching a bouquet of tulips in his hand. How will she receive him? This former career officer with the stature of Sean Connery, is embraced like a naughty boy who has finally returned to see his mother. We will never grow beyond what remains our weakest link.

Some episodes of life are a lesson about the world. Pyramid schemes offer us relative security, but they depersonalize us. My friend felt that she remained in a precarious situation. Parkinson's is also a disease of fear. I should have married her. She loved me and trusted me. She could have become “someone” again at least for somebody. But the constraints related to her illness and this complex legal situation frightened me, which she knew how to understand. My cowardice had nothing to do with the courage of the Son of God who, in the form of a simple man, poor, despised by the authorities, without special status or powers, nevertheless redeemed us of all the rights that this world raised by the devil exerted on us. Right to subdue us, right to make us sick, right to pervert and torment us in so many ways. Do you know why hurt people are drawn to religious dolorism or to degrading practices and the worship of evil? The “prince of this world” as Jesus calls him, is a sick and tormented being, and those who remain for too long on an offense they have been subjected to, are drawn to him. “In the world you will have to suffer many oppressions. But be brave! I have conquered the world,” Jesus said to his disciples. “You will be scattered and you will leave me alone. But I am not alone because the Father is with me”. “And now I am with you every day, until the end of the world”. What the grandiloquent rulers and the religion of rites and traditions were unable to do, he did by remaining silent like a lamb led to the slaughter, as Isaiah prophetically wrote. He thus erased our debt of sin, not with other people's money, but by suffering the punishment that we deserved. We can now be freed from all charges that the prosecutor of this world brought to bear on us. If things had remained there, his sacrifice would have been for nothing. But Jesus offers to marry us, that is to say, to communicate us his very nature with all the statutes linked to his divine identity. What incredible love… No doubt he saw in us riches of which we are not even aware, we who identify so easily with anything, as long as we can make a few friends to stave off our nagging loneliness.

Hence, there are now two regimes on earth. The law remains in effect, a state of emergency law put in place to keep chaos under control. But there is also this new law called “grace”, by which our slate is wiped clean, and we are offered an unconditional return to the favour of God in exchange for a life surrendered to the Spirit of Jesus. It is we who choose under which regime we want to be. When a man dies under the law, his spirit descends into Hades, since under God's law we are all guilty, awaiting judgment. It's something we should be concerned about and wanting to ignore it won't help. But when a believer dies after giving himself up to the guidance of the Spirit, he leaves behind him an empty envelope, a “body of sin” as the apostle Paul says, which immediately returns to dust. But his new identity will guide him to God, with whom a glorious and immortal resurrection body has been prepared especially for him. All of this is hidden in Christ and will be revealed in due time. And it is there, in Christ, that our adorable Lili is now. Surrounded by the reassuring arms of the Father and in the jubilant closeness of the Son of God, she prays for me and for her loved ones, and that her children also find the way. The coming of Christ will mean, for those who belong to him, their resurrection! Didn't you imagine that this frail, bent person with a hesitant gait would once again walk on the earth, without wavering, without pain, but straight on her legs and resplendent with health and beauty? Well, now you know, and I wish that you too will be here to see it!

This life is a dream – not always a good one though. Suddenly you wake up and realize that you are old. Then comes death, a death which remains against nature since the Bible affirms that it entered the world as a result of the sin of rebellion of some angels, soon followed in their example by humanity. But if you cling now to the right person who is that of the Spirit of the immortal God, then you will be reborn as a day of eternal spring awakened by the breath of the Zephyr. When I was young, I dreamed of traveling the world to discover and photograph its extraordinary birds. My approach probably lacked innocence, since I failed. Later with experience, I discovered that many birds do not know that they are beautiful, while others adorn themselves with a beauty that does not belong to them. Jesus' dream was precisely to reveal to all beings who had suffered from the world, the marvellous creature that lies dormant within them. Not all dreams have a significant value. Sometimes our dreams have an immediate effect. I remember dreaming that I was recovering from an illness, and I woke up cured. But most of the time our dreams are the audio-visual projection of some future reality, which gives them prophetic significance. God shows us something that is going to happen and which generally corresponds to a deep aspiration, difficult to express in any other way. But between the dream and its realization, there can be a test. Persevering faith in this promise is the engine that will enable us to see its fulfilment. A long time ago, I had dreamed in great detail of meeting my soul mate. During the months that followed, I was given to see her from afar on a few occasions, without knowing that it was her. Our meeting did however occur, two years later exactly according to the circumstances of the dream. Waiting puts us in condition so that we are ready to take up the challenge that is linked to the project. Life remains a battle and our creative dreams are challenging a reality that has not really changed much since the time when the spirit of God was hovering the waters of the original chaos, and in this sense we are co-creators with God.

As a die-hard photographer, I continue to be interested in technology and more particularly in that which allows me to obtain high quality images in a creative way with a limited budget. I have been using a stitching technique for a long time for these panoramas that you can see on my photo website. A novelty has recently emerged, an accessory that allows high-performance lenses intended for cameras using larger format film to be fitted on a medium format sensor digital body. By taking four successive images during a rotation of the body on an off-centre axis, it is thus possible to assemble in the end a large composite image with very high resolution having visual characteristics normally reserved to the use of the view camera. Since the recently produced accessory is intended for the medium format digital camera I currently use, and having also kept a stock of these older lenses, I was looking forward to using this gear to explore new subjects. My order had been placed for the Vertex, coming from the United States, and I was impatiently awaiting its delivery. But after a week, wanting to track my package, I discovered with disbelief first and then with some amusement, that the mention of the destination of the package was not "Switzerland", but "Swaziland". Despite a certain similarity in names, these countries are not located in the same part of the world at all. So here is my dream of creativity, momentarily lost somewhere between North America and South Africa. I will have to be a little patient. My excellent and friendly supplier acknowledged an error from their shipping department, an understandable error, perhaps partly attributable to my request to change this order, and a new package is already on its way, this time to Switzerland.

At my age we have the experience of life with us, and faith also gives us the certainty that nothing really happens by chance. This certainty allows me to have fun with this situation. And in fact, I suspect that this thing happened in order to provide matter and time for my July column which had remained stranded for lack of inspiration. The wind blows, but we don't know where it comes from nor where it goes, said Jesus. So here we go for the time of a chronicle, for Swaziland. This small landlocked country of 1.4 million inhabitants which I did not know otherwise, is located between Mozambique and South Africa. Reading a bit about its history, I can't help guessing some similarities with the small Confederation of Homo Helveticus. The Emaswati are a proud people, but they were for a long time subject to the tutelage of the Boers, then of the English, before finally claiming their independence. They are mostly Protestant Christians. After receiving the solid foundations of a biblical culture, they were able, like us Swiss, to take advantage of the influence of the “Anglophones” – since some are now offended by the term “Anglo-Saxon” – who brought them a certain openness to the world and a prosperity linked in part to the management of their heritage and to tourism. They nevertheless remain a people with a well-defined identity, as evidenced by their festivals where the men dance and where the women dressed in their beautiful ceremonial garment present themselves partially bare breasts before their sovereign, a fine example of devotion. Swaziland is also named: the Kingdom of Eswatini, because it is headed by a king, a polygamous king assisted by a young rapping princess also concerned with charity work. Its inhabitants have thus known how to mix in their own way tradition and modernity. The situation however is far from idyllic. The Emaswati remain for the most part very poor people and AIDS is wreaking havoc in the country. This reminds me of my daily reading of the Bible and of the passage in the book of Acts where Paul, stranded on the island of Malta, takes advantage of his forced stay to heal all the sick on the island by the power of the Holy Spirit. Where are we, us Christians, with our dreams and our prerogatives?… What do the Emaswati dream of? Probably of a better future where they could express who they really are in a more welcoming, more beautiful, more equitable and safer world, ruled by a universal sovereign who would derive his glory from a sincere concern for the well-being of his subjects, subjects he would regard above all as his family and friends – a dream no doubt shared by many inhabitants of the earth.

Jesus said: “Very truly I tell you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be judged but has crossed over from death to life”. His words are “spirit and life” he also says. He promises us that if we treasure his words in our hearts, we will receive within us the spirit of our Father who is also the Creator of the heavens and the earth. The closer we are to this word of life by sharing in this “bread from heaven”, the more we will also be “one” with Him and with God. Jesus also says that he is the Messiah announced by the prophets, that is to say the envoy of God who will restore the initial order on earth. The Messiah, or Christ, must free men from their faults and from their bondage to the spirits of the world by giving up his own life as the demanded ransom. He must communicate to men a new spirit and a new heart, so that they can serve God without fear. Faced with this choice, men have the option of accepting him as savior and as king. By receiving him, they identify with him and with the glory of his coming kingdom, a kingdom that will have no end. But in rejecting the Messiah, they reject the God of life who created them, and they number themselves among his enemies.

We know that man has three dimensions. In order of importance, these parts are the spirit, the soul and the body. No one is unaware of what becomes of a body when the spirit has left it. A spirit without a soul would only be the outline of a being. The soul comes down to a sensitivity or personality, it is an acquired and reflected character which cannot exist without the spirit. The spirit is our true inner identity. But deprived of a body, it is no longer part of this world. We've all heard the little stories we tell each other about people dying and showing up at Heaven's door. A door guarded by Saint Peter, who before opening it to them, will confront them with an enigma, giving matter to some funny jokes. But one does not enter Heaven as one enters the haven of Paradise Island. And besides, what is paradise? …We will come back to it later.

The spirit is the dimension of our everlasting being. The spirit transcends everything, it knows everything, it searches everything and “to the depths of God”, says the apostle Paul. Spirit is the dimension of eternal being. The spirit transcends everything, it knows everything, it searches everything and “even to the depths of God”, the apostle Paul tells us. Can God Die? Jesus temporarily abandoned his body when he was nailed to a cross, but his spirit was alive and it is forever. His last words were, "Father, I commend my spirit into your hands." Stephen prayed while he was being stoned and said, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit!" Paul also says that from now on, Christians, that is to say, people who are born of the Spirit of Christ, no longer know each other according to the flesh but according to the spirit. They are no longer men or women, Jews or Greeks, slaves or free men. What does he mean by that? Of course we remain what we are, but we receive a new identity which transcends the first. I have to admit that I tend to be impatient with the people I meet every day. When we evolve in the dimension of God, soon those who do not follow us seem to be retarded, in the first sense of the term, retarded in unimportant values. The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, says the Bible. But then an incident occurs that reminds me of who I am too. We actually harbor two personalities: a spiritual man who renews himself day by day, and an old man who nevertheless continues to exist, and who sometimes does as he pleases. “Wretch that I am! Who will deliver me from the body of this death?...” said also Paul. If, then, the apostle to the pagans says that perfection is not of this world, there is no need to be discouraged, even if we know that our personality still harbors shadows. Christ is our hope and our inheritance.

What happens to us when we die? It seems, from the testimonies reported by people who died for minutes or hours and who came back to life, that we continue to exist in full consciousness. Freed from the limitations imposed on us by our body and our psyche and from the oppression of others and the world, our senses are then deployed in a dimension that we did not know before. We see perfectly with our immaterial eyes and we hear everything around us even more acutely. But we realize we are floating, and the angst begins the moment we feel ourselves drifting and moving around and there is nothing we can do about it. We try to cling to matter, but our spirit crosses it because it cannot be held back by it. At the time of our death, many of us will realize, on the one hand, that we are beings endowed with an extraordinary dimension and that we are immortal, but at the same time, that it is too late to undertake anything either with a view to developing ourselves in this dimension of being and to attaching ourselves to a solid reality. We will still be able to muster what little savvy we have shown during our lifetime, to cry out for help to what each one calls God, with no guarantee of a result.

Many will not even have this burst of common sense as they see themselves slipping inexorably and falling towards a deep basement of our invisible world, a very dark place although lit, a crowded and badly frequented place where everyone nevertheless remains very lonely, which is above all, extremely uncomfortable to put it mildly, because in reality even demons are scared to death of hell (Luke 8:31). Most of the spirits of the dead will unfortunately find themselves locked up in this abyss until the day of the great judgment, in an appalling promiscuity if one refers to the engravings of Dante. It is a place called Hades, or hell. Spirits are held captive by fearsome evil beings. Jesus, who loves us and wants none of us to be lost, repeatedly warns us in the Gospels of the existence of this place. He urges us to do without delay and with great diligence, all that is necessary so that we do not end our course in this place of great torment. This place was not made for men. It was designed to lock up disobedient angels, and those who participate in their plots against men and against God. Men who do not know Jesus or who do an act contrary to the faith, do they all end up in this place? Who can say what actually takes place between a soul, however ill-turned, and its Creator? God has angels who, even in the beyond, work to convince still hesitant souls. But it is a very uncertain outcome, because Satan also has his angels disguised as angels of light, who on the way, take hold of the souls of those who have not loved the truth. So let's not count too much on this possibility. There was once another place called “paradise”, in Greek: “Paradeisos”. It is also described as “Kolpos,” the bosom or arms of Abraham, where his righteous descendants were carried by angels. This place of rest where the spirits of the righteous were gathered awaiting the coming of a new reality, was definitively closed after Jesus died and rose again. Jesus descended there in the company of the good crucified man, the one who recognized him and who died at his side. Jesus freed all the righteous who were captives there and took them with him to his heaven, since he had now made atonement for their sins by dying for all mankind on the cross.

I therefore have the sad duty to let you know that the Paradise no longer exists. So don't expect to find your paradise if you're a Buddhist, another paradise if you're a Muslim, and yet another if you're a Catholic. Besides, you will agree that for this concept to have worked without things degenerating into a general fight, God would have had to provide as many paradises as there are unregenerate individuals on earth. And, by the way, there never was purgatory either. This place where one could redeem oneself through suffering is a legend from Greek mythology, a mythology from which Catholicism has drawn abundantly, integrating in the same way the veneration of Our Lady the Queen of Heaven, alias Athena Parthenos. The virgin goddess, with very ancient origins, became by a wave of a magic wand, co-redemptrix of Christ. We had also integrated the magic rite of transubstantiation of the ancient Egyptians, in order to divert communion from its original meaning. These human traditions are inspired by the enemy of our souls. By changing the meaning of the Gospel, they destroy its force. Emphasis is placed on physical representations such as the hostia, and the spiritual significance of symbols is obliterated.

Anything can become an idol, and especially and a priori religion. Jesus had to confront the religious of his time by telling them: “You nullify the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And you do many other things of the same kind.” Catholicism does not hide from not granting absolute value to the word of God, but giving itself the right to adjustments, as we have seen throughout its history. These divergences of opinion are what characterize the sects. This is why Jesus ends the prophecy of Revelation with these words: “I solemnly declare it to all who hear the prophetic words of this book: if anyone adds anything to it, God will add to his lot the plagues described in this book. If anyone takes away anything from the prophetic words of this book, God will take away his right to the tree of life and the holy city described in this book”. Elsewhere, Jesus is not afraid to call these same religious leaders “sons of the devil” because they had murderous desires towards the Son of God. He foretold to them that they were going to kill the Son, in order to divert the inheritance of God for their own profit, and this is the hidden meaning of the mass, during which they offer to God the sacrifice of his son, in order to replace him with the clergy. "By doing this, you acknowledge that you are the sons of those who killed the prophets," said Jesus. I am sometimes told that I am too intolerant. “Why aren't you more relaxed and why don't you welcome others with their traditions? All roads lead to God. We are all brothers. Come and listen to so and so, talk to us about philosophy”. Our religious traditions and our humanism have crucified Jesus, and we will continue to do so whenever we consider that Jesus may not be the only way to God. Men recommend themselves, but Jesus is recommended to us by the Father. There are many pitfalls on the pilgrim's way and learning to discern them is part of our learning as sons of God.

One more word of explanation on religion. If you browse the content of my website, you might soon think that I am against Catholicism. Well, that's not the truth and that would be like saying that Jesus was against the Hebrew religion of his time. Jesus held in very high esteem the revelation of God in the Torah, and the prophets. He said, “Do not believe that I have come to abolish the Torah or the Prophets” – what we call the Old Testament –, “for I did not come to abolish, but to fulfill the Torah”. “It is these scriptures that speak of me,” will he say. He was himself a Jew, not a Christian. He will say to the Samaritan woman at the well : Salvation comes from the Jews. But Jesus stood firmly against the narrow, anthropocentric views of religious people who distorted the meaning of God's things to make them their own. I was born and raised in a Catholic family. The fact is, although I was a traditional Catholic by birth and education, I was not a Christian. I was a lost sinner. Catholics must become Christians, and by that I mean they must give their life to Jesus and receive his Holy Spirit. Otherwise, they are not saved and they are nothing more than the practitioners of another religion. And this is where the main criticism I would make of religion lies : that of leading people astray by making them believe that all is well, when in reality they are engaged on a trajectory of self-righteousness which will be disastrous to them. And when I see on television, the broadcast of a mass or even some evangelical programs, I always think of these words from Matthew 13, when Jesus said to the Pharisees: “You close the kingdom of heaven to men; you do not enter it yourselves, and you do not let those who want to enter enter it”. How many intelligent, sincere seekers does the devil manage to send back to their despair by showing them these simulacra devoid of any divine breath? …

But what happens is that, when a Catholic or any other person gives his life to Jesus and he begins to read the Bible, the heavenly Father comes to dwell in the heart of that person, and he will open his mind. Jesus promised us that the Spirit would guide us into all truth. The Spirit is not in religious interpretations, but He is in the word of God itself. For the Spirit is not in religious interpretations, but it is in the word of God itself. He is the Word. The Word is alive, it separates the flesh from the spirit, it persuades and convinces. This person will then become aware of the short comings that are present in his life as in the world and in the practice of any religion including his own. It was only when I was able to read the Gospels and then the whole Bible, without looking for anything to justify myself but by allowing myself to be challenged by the Spirit, that God began to reveal himself to me. Jesus said, in Matthew 5:20, “For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the Pharisees and the doctors of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.” He was referring to our justice, not as to our justification by religious practice, but to that given to us when we have faith in him. What Jesus requires of those who will spend eternity with him is that they leave behind hypocrisy and pretense and become convinced believers who are wholeheartedly with him. They must understand that what is important in his eyes is not the practice of religion, but to have grasped its meaning. The purpose of religion is simply to show us that we need a saviour and redeemer, and it does this very well for anyone with eyes to see beyond appearances and ears to hear beyond words.

This savior is not religion, it is not the Virgin, the Pope, the saints or even good works. How does religion convince us that we have failed miserably? Jesus said, the whole law comes down to this: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And here is the second, which is similar to it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets”. It is however possible to pretend to be a religiously good person, while raping children and robbing lonely ladies, and I'm not even talking about what we can now do in the realm of the virtual. It is possible to be devout women attached to religion, and to persecute the followers of Christ, as happened to Paul and the disciples in Antioch. But, love doesn't hurt anyone. It is in fact impossible to truly love, without the help of the spirit of Jesus. So if you want to become a perfect Jew, or a perfect Protestant or Catholic, you don't have to practice all the rites of your dead religion, you just have to take the shortcut suggested by Jesus. Religion cannot save us. But if we decide to love God and our neighbor with all our heart, we will soon understand what we are made of. Then we shall see the Jesus of our religion appear, who will convince us that we are just lost sinners as good as we are in other's people eyes, and who will save us by granting us his grace and his spirit, and will then lead us far beyond the letter and the rites, towards green pastures, in the wisdom of the heart and in love and light. Being religious means that one is preoccupied with man and with appearances, and this constitutes a vain way of living as Jesus reminds Martha when he answers to her : “You worry and you fret about many things, but only one is important. Mary your sister has chosen the good part and it will not be taken from her.” This Mary was sitting at the feet of Jesus and she was literally drinking in his words. Something another Mary was not doing, who was nevertheless the mother of Jesus. She was sorry and ashamed because of the controversy that her son aroused among the clergy and the notables of her time. She even thought that he had lost his mind. She will be converted later at the foot of the cross, when her respectable woman's heart will be pierced and emptied once and for all of the consideration she had for men and for the servants of religion. Henceforth promoted to the rank of pilgrim in the spirit of Abraham, believer in the resurrection, persecuted with the disciples, she will immediately experience the consolation promised by her son: “Truly I tell you,” Jesus replied, “no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age: homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields—along with persecutions—and in the age to come eternal life”. This is the meaning of the last words granted to his mother by Jesus when he was crucified.

Things are now clear on the level of the hereafter. There are now only two places: heaven with its court, its enclosure and its gates, which is the awesome place that Jesus prepared with his angels for those who allow themselves to be redeemed by him from their vain way of living, and the hell where all those who have persisted in their disobedience go, awaiting another resurrection, but for their judgment. So today, with this new reality that emerged just over two thousand years ago, the only way God has established for us to escape the finality of hell is to let ourselves be saved by the one who came from God and whom he sent with the mission to wash us and to equip us for a new life. Because heaven is not the place of a final stay but it is a sort of balcony dominating the earth, or an ark if you prefer, in which the righteous are lodged while awaiting their return to earth alongside Christ. Heaven is also the spiritual model of a new earth that it will come to espouse at a moment in time. The one who possesses this ark is the Messiah, Jesus as we call him in our culture, or Yeshua for the Jews, a name which means “Savior”, or “Rescuer” we might say. But how will Jesus save us? I'm going to use a metaphor, very imperfect like all images. You know how a balloon filled with hydrogen behaves compared to a balloon that is simply filled with air or a heavy gas. I could have said: filled with helium, but since a number of Christians have mingled the Holy Spirit with a hilarious spirit, I will refrain from it. Hydrogen seems more appropriate to me because it is drawn from water, and in addition to being light, it has the property of igniting. Jesus said he would baptize us by filling us with the Holy Spirit and with fire, the fire of love for the truth that cleanses us from any compromises we have made with the one to whom this earth belongs since Adam and Eve handed over the property to him.

Could there be injustice in God who wanted things to be like this? What about those who have not been exposed to the Bible and the Gospel? The Bible says that men are inexcusable, because the perfections of God are seen in creation and in a flagrant way. Those therefore who, contemplating the world and nature, do not see there the existence of the great architect, are the artisans of their own misfortune. Everything related to evolutionary thought, these atheistic views by which we grant ourselves the right to kill our babies, to decide our sexuality, or to assert our dominant views on our neighbor, stems from the revolt of the devil against God.

Jesus wants to communicate us a new nature, very different from that which is destined to end its course in Hades. For this, he sets us free from our chains of resentment and hatred, from our inherited wickedness and from the weight of a bad conscience, and he breathes into us a spirit that is both peaceful and combative, a spirit that comes from God, which is pure and which also elevates us. Don't fear, it is not the spirit of those who have the machine gun in one hand and the Bible in the other, but it is a spirit that loves its neighbour and is ready to lay down its life for others, but of course not in a stupid way. We understand that there cannot be a different identity on this earth if it is not fiercely defended. And at the same time, Jesus said that his Kingdom is not of this world and that if it were, his angels would have fought for him. That time will come… We all die, one day, and this spirit which is nothing less than the Spirit of God, will lift us up and allow us to be naturally reunited with its source. And soon, we will find ourselves clothed again with a glorious body that will be in the image of God. This is how, during our lifetime, we can, through knowledge and obedience to the word of Jesus, be saved from the tragic destiny which is reserved for the spirits of those who will have rejected him. So, Friends who are reading this, don't think you have to become a better person first. Jesus came for those who know they are sinners, not for those who think they are good people and can make it by themselves. Don't wait, because you don't know how much longer you can say tomorrow. If you take this step of faith toward your Heavenly Father, then you will see great joy flowing from your reunion.

“Farewell my beautiful, may our Lord welcome you in the place he has graciously prepared for you in his glorious presence”.

Friends and family have been supportive of me and her children and that has helped us through. But then I learn that an acquaintance has lost the battle with depression. And if we want to consider it, there are so many people around us who are depressed, coming out of this crisis of confinement, either after the loss of a loved one or a job, or from a sense of helplessness towards less favourable times and circumstances. The world will rebuild itself on false certainties until the next identity crisis. For the problem of the world is indeed a problem of identity.

Everyone needs somebody to love, and everyone needs also to be loved by someone. Jesus told us that we have a Heavenly Father who sincerely cares about each of us who are his children. He is like the father of the prodigal son who spent his evenings gazing up the road from the hill, always hoping for his return. He knows us by name and as if that weren't enough, Jesus says he keeps records of every hair that falls from our heads. Jesus also says that he was sent by the Father as a shepherd whose most precious sheep was lost, in order to give his life so that each one of us may be found. Do we know who we are? We are, each individually, the apple of God's eye, his most precious child and the focus of his attention. He wants to establish us in Him, in his family also, and give us an inheritance. Can we believe this? Maybe. Yet this is the rock on which Jesus builds his church: a people who have a real relationship with the Father, who hear his gentle whispers and do what he asks of them. What the Father asks of us is never something impossible. It is that we love one another and do for others what we wish was done for us, starting by forgiving the wrong they did to us. This is so important to him that he warns us that those who do not care and hold something against someone, might condemn themselves to outer darkness. The world has its agenda, but God wants us in his image so that by being together we can be happy. Needing others is not a weakness, but a strength, because we complement each other, and our union is a source of life and joy, according to Psalm 133.

 

We do not belong primarily to our country, but our origins are in God and our destiny is too. The problems with which humanity is constantly confronted come from the fact that we wanted to follow the example given by some of the angels, those who among the guardians whom God had established to lead us, chose to take their independence. At first, God was able to limit the damage by closing access to what the Bible describes as the tree of life. Cut off from this source of permanent spiritual regeneration, the rebellious angels have become devils, and their disembodied posterity – the spirits of the Nephilim – are demons. Under their leadership and because of their oppression, men now experience suffering and death. Because instead of returning to God, men accepted their fate and they built their own Disney world within a society in constant rebellion against God. And thanks to the pseudo-knowledge transmitted to us by these fallen angels, we have been able to develop sciences, philosophies and religions, which are all substitutes for what God wanted to share with us. There is in the same way, a false church, established by whom you guess, not on the Holy Spirit but rather on the so called revelations of some “angels of light”. This church which is often splashed by the scandals that emanate from the corrupt system on which the whole world is built functions in parallel to that whose structures are invisible. Its whole raison d'être is to recuperate the inclinations towards God and for conversion of men.

Even “domesticated” by the demons, men knew how to keep their wild instinct of sons of God. But what was to lead them to do great things in the Lord now leads them to grow in evil. If you keep up to date with what's going on in the film industry, you know what I'm talking about. Producer Mel Gibson recently expressed his disgust with Hollywood and the motion picture industry which he says, after getting into the worst, is now preying on the lives of innocent children, and I'm afraid he doesn't speak figuratively. The only entity that refuses to believe that there is a devil, is the devil himself, because he still considers himself to be God. But we must not blind ourselves to the fact that this corruption affects a world of which we ourselves are part, by our birth. Our modes of operation, and our often very elaborate inventions, everything that allows us to live outside the pre-established order, is what God brings together under a general term which is "sin", a word which literally means : to miss the mark, or ignore the true meaning of life. Our societies have all developed ideologies and religions to give us the illusion that our life has meaning. Whether it is Christianity for some, patriotism or socialism for others, or even hedonism or oneirism, the meaning we give to our existence is totally artificial for as long as our relationship to the living God is n is not reciprocal. Whatever values ​​we cling to, our society remains a fragile and very incoherent whole, as suggested by this great statue with feet mixed with iron and clay seen in a dream by a great Iranian king of the past. We save the sick in the hospitals and we kill perfectly healthy babies in those same hospitals, to cite just one example of our incoherent ways.

So, despite all the progress of our science, this death to which God has promised us as a consequence of sin, remains inescapable. But what is death? Since we are otherwise immortal creatures. What dies, is actually our body which is our vehicle. We can change the course of our route while we are still alive, but once dead, it isn't in our hands any more. God promises to those who follow his Christ, a resurrection in a glorious and immortal celestial body. But contrary to what Easterners believe, we will not have the possibility of reincarnating on this earth to redeem a failed life in another life. “It is appointed for men to die once, after which comes judgment,” says God in Hebrews 9. If there is a judgment, it means that we will each be accountable individually...

Now, you have probably heard of the “law” and of the “grace” of God. We sometimes oppose these two notions. They are not opposed, but in some circumstances one can be substituted for the other. The law of men can condemn someone to death for his actions, and a judge or a person of authority like the President, can decide to pardon that person and set him free from the charges against him. Strict compliance with rules is necessary for the harmonious functioning of a family. As a wise man said : our freedom ends where that of others starts. God takes his requirements very seriously. He condemns to death those who break his law. It is not wickedness on his part, but it is the pledge of a society that can endure for eternity and demonstrate all the fullness and magnificence of God. The fear of hell has been widely used to captivate people's minds and lock them into a religious system whose observance makes people more docile and more useful to society. Revolutions and various reforms have had the side effect of freeing us from these fears, at least in appearance. But is it enough to deny the existence of sin for it to cease to exist? Or is it enough to invent new rules for the universe to adapt and to follow our reasoning? We can at most, influence our society which remains a malleable whole, to a certain extent. But can we change God's mind? Some seem to conceive it, but the truth awaits us at the end of the road. The Bible could not be clearer on this subject : sinner men will be judged by their own deeds and by their words, before enduring a second death. Now, sinners we are all without exception. We were all condemned to death. But God, who cannot deny himself in his requirements of justice but who is also a father to us, saw fit to give up his own life as the ransom which was required in his law, to redeem ours. What more could he have done? The grace of God is received by accepting that, in the person of the Son of God, who lived without sin, God bore our sin. If we identify ourselves with this death, which he accepted in our place, and consider ourselves as belonging to him henceforth – for this is what God expects from our part – God will communicate his life to us by giving us his own Spirit, who comes to dwell in us. We become just as if we had never sinned – this is the meaning of the word “justified”. His Spirit is not only the pledge of our forgiveness and our release from the last judgment, but in Him is also the eternal Life which was promised to us. “So then, if God was so good to make a way for us to be saved from the punishment of sin, what makes us think we will not go to hell if we do not take the way to heaven that He has made for us?” warns Paul in the Epistle to the Hebrews.